The Hidden Read online

  She is in the woods – or maybe even a forest.

  The ground feels spongy under her feet, and her nostrils are filled with the smell of damp ferns.

  She knows it’s important that she’s there, but she doesn’t know why it’s important.

  It bothers her that the trees don’t look like they should – are different to the ones in … the ones in … the ones in wherever she is now.

  No, she doesn’t mean that, either.

  Where she is now is in the woods.

  What she wants to say is, different to ones near where she lives.

  She wishes she knew why she was here – in this place with trees which are as foreign to her as … as she doesn’t know what.

  And suddenly there is a sound – a dull thudding, regular sound, vibrating across the woodland floor.

  Then she sees them – the man and the horse.

  The horse is a chestnut mare.

  How does she know it’s a mare at this distance?

  She really couldn’t say.

  The man is wearing the scarlet and blue uniform of a Polish cavalry officer. He has seen her, and canters up to where she is standing.

  Looking up at the horse – seeing which part of it is at her eye level – she realizes she must have shrunk since the morning.

  The man reaches down and swings her into the saddle, as if she weighed nothing.

  She can smell the leather of his boots. She can feel the slight tickle as his chin bristles brush against her soft skin.

  She knows who he is now – he’s her father.

  But he’s dead – mowed down as he foolishly, but heroically, led his company in a charge against German machine guns.

  Yes, he’s dead, so he can’t be the reason she’s here.

  It is all so confusing.

  Meadows watched Louisa carefully guiding her two half-brothers down the stairs – each with one of his tiny hands in her much larger ones.

  The girl had a natural air of authority about her, and it had clearly never occurred to either of them to seriously challenge that authority yet – but when one of them did, Meadows suspected, it would be Thomas, who seemed much more aware than his brother of the power that was growing in him.

  It was impossible to say whether or not they had the same father, she thought, though that, too, might become clearer as they grew older.

  Meadows had once briefly met all three of the possible fathers (and, for a while, had carried their testicles around in a plastic bag), but she could not see any of those men reflected back to her in the faces of the twins.

  ‘I’m going to switch on the television, to hear what they’re saying about the attack,’ Louisa told Meadows.

  Meadows frowned. ‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ she asked.

  ‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ Louisa wondered.

  Because it’ll get you thinking about your mother, lying helpless in that hospital room, Meadows thought – and that’s the last thing I want.

  ‘It might upset the twins,’ she said.

  ‘Bullshit!’ Louisa retorted. She looked rather shocked that the word had escaped from her own mouth, but having set it free, she said briskly, ‘the twins are too young to understand what’s going on. But you weren’t really thinking about them at all, were you?’

  ‘No,’ Meadows said, and wondered why, when she could put the fear into almost anyone she came into contact with, this kid found it so easy to ride roughshod over her.

  ‘I have to get used to the possibility that Mum might die,’ Louisa said. ‘I have to be ready for it.’

  ‘She’s not going to die,’ Meadows said.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Louisa replied, with a calm that was almost icy. ‘I have to be ready for it – I must be prepared.’

  She led the boys to the table, hoisted them into their chairs, and began preparing their cereal.

  Meadows glanced down at her watch. ‘Look, I’ve got to go,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Louisa said. ‘Elena and I can manage.’

  ‘Well, I’ll … I’ll call in again later,’ Meadows said uncomfortably.

  ‘That would be nice,’ Louisa told her.

  Once the sergeant had gone, Louisa’s poise collapsed. It started with a slight wobble of her chin, then the pricking tears in her eyes, until finally a wave of despair washed over her entire body.

  ‘Louisa?’ Thomas said worriedly.

  ‘I’m all right, Tommy,’ Louisa said, wiping away the tears with one hand and rubbing the top of his head with the other. ‘Honestly.’

  She was not feeling as brave as she’d been when Meadows was there, but she knew that what she’d said then had been true, and was no less true now.

  She had to prepare herself for the worst!

  She crossed the room on legs that had suddenly turned to wood, and raised an arm impeded by invisible weights until it was high enough to switch the television on.

  Rhino Dixon’s head appeared on the screen. In fact, it filled the screen, in a way you just knew no other head would quite be able to do.

  ‘Following the attack on DCI Paniatowski, officers searching the woodland area discovered the body of a girl aged between sixteen and eighteen. A picture of her has since been released,’ Dixon said.

  An artist’s impression replaced the chief superintendent’s head, though his voice continued to provide the background music.

  ‘Forensics would seem to indicate that she died …’

  ‘Well, bugger me sideways!’ Louisa said.

  The team briefing had been scheduled for immediately after the press briefing, and so, half a minute after the monitor went dead, the door to the CID suite swung open and Dixon marched in.

  ‘What did you think of my performance, Sergeant Higgins?’ he demanded.

  ‘It was very good, sir,’ the sergeant replied.

  ‘Yes, it was, wasn’t it,’ Dixon agreed. He ran his eyes over his own team, and then settled on Crane and Beresford.

  ‘Where’s your sergeant, Inspector Beresford?’ he asked. ‘Is this maybe a bit too early in the morning for her? Does she need a couple of hours to put on her face before she comes to work?’

  ‘Meadows doesn’t wear much make-up, sir,’ he said, knowing it was the wrong answer – but angry enough, on Meadows’s behalf, not to give a damn. ‘In fact, I don’t think she wears any.’

  At least, not in the daytime, he added mentally, but at night – when she’s Zelda, the bringer of pain and pleasure – it’s a very different story.

  ‘Are you trying to be funny, inspector?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘No, sir, just answering your question,’ Beresford said. ‘But perhaps a better answer would have been that she spent the night at the hospital, with Louisa.’

  ‘Louisa?’

  ‘DCI Paniatowski’s daughter. Meadows felt there should be someone with her.’

  ‘There probably should have been,’ Dixon agreed, ‘but Meadows does know that we’re the police force, not the social services department, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, sir, that’s the other reason she was there – she thought Louisa might know something which could help the investigation, and not even be aware of it.’

  Dixon clapped his hands – briefly, but appreciatively.

  ‘That’s the best excuse I’ve heard in a long time. It’s a real thoroughbred, is that.’ He turned to Higgins. ‘Would you like to brief us, sergeant?’

  ‘The body was found just before dark, last night,’ Higgins said. ‘It was decided to acknowledge the discovery, but to release very few details until this morning.’

  ‘I half-expected not to have to release an artist’s impression at all,’ Dixon said. ‘I thought that once we’d announced we’d found the body, anybody whose kid hadn’t come home at the right time would ring us. But it didn’t happen, did it, sergeant?’

  ‘A few of the usual cranks phoned up – but that was about it.’

  ‘Five minutes from now, it will be a different story,’ Dix
on promised. ‘The switchboards are probably already jammed. Anyway, carry on, sergeant.’

  ‘At the moment, we’ve got a lot more questions than answers,’ Higgins admitted. ‘We’re hopeful we’ll find out who she is in the next hour or so, but that still doesn’t tell us why she was up at the hall, or how she got there. What we also don’t know is why he did what he did after her death.’

  ‘I said at the press conference that she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, because I don’t think what happened was a sexual assault, though it’s possible the experts will disagree with me later,’ Dixon said. He lit a cigarette, and inhaled deeply, as if he really needed something to distract him. ‘After the victim was dead – and Dr Shastri is convinced this was post mortem – the killer rolled down her panties and – and these are Dr Shastri’s words – sluiced out her vagina with a liquid so hot that it caused extensive blistering. Then he rolled her panties back up again. Now did he do it as a punishment? Hardly – unless he didn’t know she was dead. And why put the panties back on? That shows a degree of respect totally at odds with drenching her fanny in boiling tea.’

  ‘Tea?’ somebody gasped. ‘Did you say tea, boss?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Dixon agreed. ‘We can’t be sure until it’s been tested, but the doc’s almost certain the liquid used was tea.’

  ‘We also don’t know why the killer attacked DCI Paniatowski,’ Higgins added, ‘because, as the boss said at the press conference, she can’t have seen the murder, or she’d never have left herself so open to attack like that.’

  ‘And why did he use a stone to attack the chief inspector?’ Dixon said. ‘Why didn’t he just strangle her? Wasn’t he confident of his own strength?’

  ‘Maybe he’d have thought it was sacrilegious, sir,’ Crane whispered to Beresford.

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ asked Dixon, who, even when he was facing in the opposite direction, seemed to miss nothing.

  ‘It was just a thought, sir – probably not worth mentioning,’ Crane said awkwardly.

  ‘On the contrary, if you’ve got a theory, we’d love to hear it,’ Dixon said. ‘We’re always willing to listen to anything that an Oxford University graduate wants to tell us.’

  Now how the bloody hell did the chief super know about that? Crane wondered. The only people who were supposed to know were Paniatowski, Beresford and Meadows.

  ‘Well?’ Dixon demanded.

  ‘It’s possible the girl’s killing was a ritual one, sir,’ he said.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘What he did to her after she was dead.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Dixon agreed. ‘And how does that relate to the attack on DCI Paniatowski?’

  ‘In a ritual killing, the killer rarely dislikes the victim,’ Crane said. ‘On the contrary, he often holds the victim in high esteem, and the manner in which he kills is a way of showing his respect.’

  ‘And because DCI Paniatowski wasn’t part of the ritual, she couldn’t be strangled?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Crane agreed. ‘He wouldn’t have considered her worthy of that particular death.’

  ‘And she’d miss out on the hot tea as well?’

  ‘Undoubtedly, sir. That would be like giving the last rites to a dog – it would degrade the whole process.’

  The door opened, and a WPC entered the room, carrying a sheet of paper which she handed directly to Dixon.

  The chief inspector read it once, read it a second time, then looked up at Beresford.

  ‘You did say that DCI Paniatowski has a daughter, called Louisa, didn’t you, inspector?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And would you say she’s a sensible kind of girl?’

  ‘Very sensible. She’s thinking of becoming a police cadet, and I don’t think she’d have any difficulty with the selection board.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Dixon mused, ‘because, you see, she’s just phoned up to say that the dead girl is called Mary Green, and that Mary and her brother John are both in Louisa’s class at school.’

  The same WPC returned with another piece of paper. ‘And it seems that young Louisa is right,’ Dixon said, ‘because we’ve now had another six calls – all of which identify the girl as Mary Green.’ He frowned. ‘The really interesting question is, why wasn’t one of those calls from her mum and dad?’

  FIVE

  If Balaclava Street had been named after the battle in the Crimean War – which seemed more than likely, Meadows thought – then the rows of mill workers’ terraced cottages which lined it were around 120 years old.

  The houses themselves were still structurally sound, but this street – and perhaps a couple of dozen other streets just like it – were still doomed, because though the two-up-two-downs were once regarded as ‘little palaces’ by those who lived in them, they fell well short of modern expectations.

  Meadows parked her Mini Cooper in front of number 29, which was where, according to her school records, Mary Green lived.

  She quickly examined the front door (painted a standard navy blue), and the pattern on the curtains hanging in the front windows (daffodils and snowdrops) – and decided there was nothing unusual there.

  She turned to the man in the passenger seat and said, ‘Since – as you’ve been at pains to point out – this is more your investigation than it is ours, I expect you’ll be handling this interview, will you, DS Higgins?’

  Higgins shrugged. ‘In this sort of situation, I always feel the feminine touch is more appropriate,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘Meaning that you haven’t got the stomach to tell a mother that her daughter is probably dead?’ Meadows asked.

  Higgins forced a grin to his face. ‘That’s men for you,’ he said. The grin vanished so quickly it might never have been there. ‘Seriously,’ he continued, ‘the worse it’s handled, the less we’re likely to get out of it – which is why, on this occasion, I think you should be in charge.’

  ‘In that case, let’s do it,’ Meadows said, and since she was not encumbered by a seat belt (as the more safety conscious DS Higgins was) she was already knocking on the door of number 29 by the time the other sergeant had got fully out of the car.

  The woman who answered Meadow’s knock was around forty years old. She was not particularly attractive, but she was not particularly ugly, either. She was wearing a floral pinafore (as, in all probability, were most of the housewives on Balaclava Street at that time of day), and she looked quite unnerved to find a stranger standing at her front door.

  ‘Mrs Green?’ Meadows asked, as she held out her warrant card.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman replied, somehow managing to make her answer seem more like a question.

  ‘We’re here to ask you a few questions about your daughter,’ Meadows explained. ‘Do you think we could come inside?’

  ‘Mary’s at school, so I don’t really see the point …’ Mrs Green began, but as Meadows continued walking towards her, apparently completely unaware that as things stood, a collision was inevitable, she decided she had no choice but to retreat down her hallway – and as soon as she’d done that, Meadows and Higgins were inside the house, too.

  ‘You’d better go into the parlour, while I fetch my husband,’ Mrs Green said, indicating the door to the left, before carrying on herself to the back of the house, where the kitchen was.

  Meadows and Higgins exchanged glances, then mutually decided to do as they’d been instructed.

  ‘Well, this is like being in a time machine,’ said Higgins, who was local and essentially working class.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Meadows – who was not even close to being either of those things.

  ‘It used to be, round here, that the parlour was the best room, used only for christenings, weddings and funerals,’ Higgins explained. ‘It didn’t matter how big the family was, you made do with the other three rooms, and kept your parlour pristine. Well, of course, that’s all gone now – people have more sense and care m
ore about their comfort than appearances – but it hasn’t gone here, has it?’

  Meadows looked around. The print hanging over the mantelpiece was called The Chinese Girl, and had once been so popular that half the front parlours in the country seemed to have one. Below the mantelpiece, a fan had been made out of wallpaper, and placed in the empty fireplace. On the wall opposite the print, three painted plaster ducks of different sizes were frozen, mid-flight, on their journey to the ceiling. The three-piece was not new, but looked unused; the rug in front of the hearth was made of heavy crocheted wool.

  ‘It’s like a museum, isn’t it?’ Higgins asked.

  ‘Or an Alfred Hitchcock film set,’ Meadows said – and though she did not make a habit of shuddering, she shuddered then.

  She had been getting the feeling that there was something missing, and now she realized what it was.

  ‘Have the people who keep their front parlours like this got something against photographs?’ she asked.

  ‘No, of course they haven’t,’ Higgins said, his tone suggesting that if she didn’t already know that, then she had no chance of ever understanding the north. ‘We put great store by photos round here. Why, even when there was real poverty, families still managed to scrape enough to go to a professional photographer, and …’ He stopped, mid-flow, and looked around him. ‘There aren’t any photos in here, are there?’

  ‘No,’ Meadows agreed, ‘there are not.’

  There was the sound of footsteps in the hallway, then a middle-aged man in a blue boiler suit appeared in the doorway.

  ‘I’m Mr Green,’ he said. ‘You’re lucky to have caught me, because normally, at this time of day, I’d already be at work.’

  Meadows ran her eyes up and down the boiler suit for signs of the company logo, but it didn’t appear to be bearing one.

  ‘Now what’s all this about our Mary?’ Mr Green asked.

  ‘I take it that you haven’t watched any television this morning,’ Meadows said.

  ‘We don’t own a television, do we, Mother?’ Mr Green said.

  ‘No, we don’t,’ came his wife’s voice from the corridor.