PROLOGUE

i.
1995, STEFAN MARIĆ: Victim

The night security officer, who was supposed to be manning the CCTV monitors covering Leicester city centre, had ambled off to fetch a cup of coffee. While he was in the kitchenette, he spotted that day’s paper with the quick crossword lying uppermost, half-completed.

Five minutes later, congratulating himself on his achievement, he wandered slowly back to his desk, past the locked doors of offices and darkened computer suites. It had been a quiet evening really; pub-closing had been uneventful and the night-clubbers weren’t due out for a good while yet. The significance of the black and white image that confronted him, as he resumed his seat, took a second or two to sink in. Then his hand reached automatically for the telephone headset, and kept on mechanically pushing the nine until somebody answered. He found himself unable to tear his eyes away from the screen.

The remains of a young man lay in a pool of glossy black, on a pavement, encircled by ring upon ring of motionless, open-mouthed people – so many that they continued beyond the boundaries of the small rectangle in the middle of the bank of monitors. The figure at the centre of the picture lay curled in a foetal position, one shoe off; the pool continuing to spread slowly outwards from his head like a dark halo.

At last somebody moved - a girl, stepping carefully towards the body and gingerly reaching out a shaking hand to his neck. She held it there for a minute, as though in freeze-frame, and then gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

Then all hell broke loose.

ii.
1995, AMELIA OWENS: Victim

Max was her first boyfriend, he had known that, and he was older. He didn’t know then, if she had actually told her parents how much older, but he hoped not. On the day she invited him to have dinner with her family, she greeted him at the garden gate. Warm summer winds whipped an old-fashioned floral dress against her hips. He noted with pleasure how the sun shone through the thin fabric, silhouetting the delicious curve of the underside of her left breast. He assumed that she was aware of the effect, and had stage-managed it just for him.

They kissed over the gate - she stealing a quick glance toward the dark kitchen windows first – his hand snaking through the wrought iron and up her smooth, ripe thigh, expecting at any moment to be brushed away. At this moment, or maybe this? But she did not resist. At a point far beyond his expectations, his hand met heat, met naked skin, met soft damp curls and the girl smiled at the involuntary sound he made.

Amelia knew that he was falling for her. The outer limits of his defences were already crumbling, although the splinter of ice at his heart would remain. The man, Max, would continue to play the dominant role in their relationship; it was their unspoken covenant that Amelia would allow this, perhaps even enjoy it, all the time knowing that he was in thrall to her.

It had been only two weeks since he took her virginity and, even by his standards, she was coming along fast.

When later she died, and he was imprisoned, those who knew her had plenty of time to think about Amelia; how easily and blindly they had fallen in love with her, and how little she had deserved that love. Her friends and acquaintances had been items collected, valued and inventoried according to their usefulness. Their purpose was to fill in the gaps; to plug the holes between the girl she dreamed herself to be, and the one she was.




PART ONE

THE INVESTIGATION
Chapter 1, Amelia’s body - November 1995

An icy gust of wind blew a crackling fistful of dry leaves into her face, but the girl did not flinch, or even blink. For an hour she had lain there already, in silent contemplation of the crumbling canopy against the lightening sky. The crisp November air cooled her body, despite the red woollen coat; and the blue eyes, once clear and bright, dulled with each passing minute. As the last electrical signals crackled through her dying brain, fading threads of consciousness dredged up the image of Stefan Marić, just as she had last seen him: battered and bleeding in a city street. For the briefest moment, before the blood loss became too great, before mind and body parted ways for good, she wondered how she came to be there at all.

A couple of hours later, photographed, catalogued and delivered into the care of the police pathologist, the girl lies in the same position but now on a cold, steel table; naked in the surgical glare except for a stiff, white sheet, covering her like a blanket of snow. The pathologist has carefully packed away Amelia’s scarlet coat, her jeans and other garments, and they have joined a small heap of meticulously labelled plastic bags in the corner of the room, awaiting inspection by CSI. He has already taken the girl’s temperature and, together with the air temperature out in the woods and the thickness of her clothing, has used this to estimate her time of death between six and seven o'clock that same morning. He is already quite certain that she did not die through natural causes and now he turns back the hem of the sheet, revealing the still, pale feet.

The first things Doctor Hussain notices about the feet are the toenails: the nails of the little toes, in particular, are tiny shell-like slivers that barely extend beyond the cuticle in length. These narrow crescents are accentuated by Germolene-pink nail polish. On closer inspection, however, he realises that the little toe on the right has no nail at all; the girl has painstakingly painted the skin to match the other foot. Why would anyone bother to do this? he asks himself.
The doctor is reminded of his own daughter, and the tightrope she and her peers seemed to feel compelled to walk, between conformity and individuality: the need to be different, and yet not too different. He thinks he understands.





FINDINGS OF THE POST MORTEM
Item 1: Missing nail from right little toe

Police Interview Transcript, 30/11/1995. Present: Detective Constable Ricks of Leicester and Rutland CID, and Caroline Hatchell, eighteen, who discovered the body.

DC RICKS: Caroline? Caroline? Miss Hatchell? Do you want me to call a doctor…? Shit! She’s fainted. I’m stopping the tape.

Caroline Hatchell was not quite unconscious, but she had definitely felt herself losing the mental hold she was accustomed to having on her limbs. She had been sitting in the small room for an hour, waiting for someone to come and tell her that it had all been a big mistake. During this time, Caroline had been dimly aware that every single muscle in her body was tensed, and beginning to ache, but had been entirely unconscious of the slight rocking motion that she had adopted after her first twenty minutes alone with the terrible news that Amelia was dead. When the doorknob finally started to turn, it had been like something out of a horror film. The mild-looking young policeman’s first words would reveal the truth. She had an urge to run to him and cover his mouth with her hand, to stop the words from spilling out. Over-stimulated and overwrought, her system simply crashed.

DC RICKS: Caroline, are you sure you’re up to this? The doctor says you’re in shock. I’m sorry, if we’d known how close you were to the victim you’d probably have seen the doctor straight away, instead of sitting here for ages, waiting for someone to come and talk to you. We can only apologise…

C HATCHELL: Thank you. No, it’s my fault. I should have called for someone. I should have told someone. I don’t know what I feel, I just feel… numb.

DCR: The doctor gave you a mild sedative and prescribed a cup of hot, sweet tea. Sometimes the old remedies are the best.

CH: Thank you… Ugh! Don’t take sugar.

DCR: Think of it as medicine.

[PAUSE]

CH: What do you want to know?

DCR: We already have your written statement, Miss Hatchell, as to what you saw out in the woods this morning. I won’t ask you to describe it again. However, now that we know you were a close friend of the victim, we rather need to know how you came to be out there in the first place.

CH: She phoned me. She phoned me and said she was in trouble.

DCR: At what time did she telephone?

CH: Five-thirty-ish. Maybe a quarter to six.

DCR: A quarter to six this morning? She called you at home?

CH: Yes.

DCR: But you placed the 999-call at eight AM, by which time we estimate that Amelia had already been dead for at least an hour. How long were you in the woods, Miss Hatchell?

CH: Only a few minutes. You see, I didn’t go right away. And when I did… When I did, it was too late.

DCR: Why did you wait? If she was in trouble?

CH: Oh God! I had no idea she meant real trouble. I thought it was just her, being Amelia. I thought she’d had a fight with her boyfriend again and couldn’t get in at home because her dad had set the burglar alarm, or maybe she had no money for a taxi. I didn’t know she was going to get murdered.

DCR: I think I understand. A bit of a drama queen, was she?

CH: Something like that, yeah. But I should have gone. Oh God, I should have gone.

DCR: Had you gone to her rescue many times before?

CH: Yes.

DCR: Well, I don’t think you can blame yourself for that. Miss Hatchell, we – I – need a small favour from you. We’d like you to formally identify the body, if you can.

CH: But her parents… Won’t they…?

DCR: Yes, they will have to see her – will probably want to see her – most parents do. But they’re not here yet, and it would just speed things along for us. If you feel up to it.

CH: Of course.

DCR: I am now suspending the interview, and turning off the tape.


DCR: Interview resumed. Detective Constable Jim Ricks and Miss Caroline Hatchell.

CH: I’m so sorry. I just couldn’t look at her face.

DCR: It’s all right Caroline. You gave us what we needed anyway.

CH: I’d almost forgotten about the toenail. So silly. They’re supposed to grow back, you know.

DCR: How did it happen?

CH: Oh, it was ages ago. We were thirteen or fourteen, perhaps. Amelia and I were best mates - had been since we were three. We'd agreed to play Sylvanian Families with her little sister, Rose, because otherwise Amelia’s mum wouldn’t let us go to the park later.
Also, I remember she was making a chocolate cake downstairs and it smelt gorgeous. If we kept her happy we’d get to lick the bowl. It was gluten-free, this being Amelia’s house, but chocolate’s chocolate right?

Goodness, these sedatives are good, aren’t they? I feel quite dozy.

DCR: Just go on. Tell me in your own time. Tell me about Amelia. I need to get to know her.

CH: We reckoned about another ten or twenty minutes with Rose would be enough. I didn’t think I could stand much longer at that temperature anyway. It was no wonder Amelia and Rose were always togged up in layers and layers of their Nanna’s knitting.

Actually, I have to say the little forest animals were quite cute, especially the baby rabbits and the little hedgehogs in frocks. Rose had tons of the figures but none of the buildings, so we were using an old stool that looked like a small wooden barrel with a padded leather top, and we pretended it was their school. It had a little archway at the base, like a cartoon mouse-hole, but no windows or anything. It was really heavy.

I liked being at Amelia’s. My house was nice too, don’t get me wrong, but Amelia’s was bigger and she had three sisters. I wished I had sisters too, even though she had to share her room with one of them, which she hated.
Rose was busy, complaining again that Amelia wouldn’t do voices for the different animals. She said Amelia always did them when they were on their own, and it was just because I was there that she wouldn’t do them now. Amelia denied it completely. I remember that Rose said, if Amelia was going to be stupid about it, we could both get out of her room.

Amelia said “Excuse me, your room? Since when is this your room? In fact it was my room for four years, until you were born, and now unfortunately it’s our room, but it’s really more mine than yours because I was here first. We don’t want to play your stupid game anyway. It’s bloody freezing up here and, besides, Sylvanian Families are for babies.”
That turned out to have been a bad idea because Rose shot off, calling for their mum, but Amelia remembered about the park and the cake mixture and everything, and made a dash for the bedroom door, slamming it before Rose could run and tell. We managed to calm Rose down by promising to do whatever bloody silly voices she wanted, and I told her that she was my favourite person under the age of ten. God, I remember it like it was yesterday.

Later, when it was time, we all trooped down to the kitchen to find that Amelia’s older sisters, Sarah-Jane and Emma, had got there before us and were already nearly finished with the mixing bowl. We got the beaters from the electric whisk and Rose got the spatula, so it was worth it in the end. I wanted sisters of my own more than just about anything, right then, sitting chatting in their cosy little kitchen. Amelia did get lumbered with Rose a lot of the time, even though she was actually much closer in age to the older two. Emma was eighteen, back then. Sarah-Jane was sixteen, Amelia and I were fourteen, and Rose was still only nine.

But Rose was okay, better than my useless lump of a little brother anyway. The best thing for Amelia, was that the older ones were allowed to take her to the pub with them. She wasn’t allowed to go to nightclubs, but still... I bet my parents would have let me go too but the Owens girls never invited me. I hinted once or twice, but Amelia always had some excuse. I asked her straight out once, if I could go with them that night, but she said it was a bad time because Emma’s boyfriend had just dumped her and she needed a girl’s night out to cheer her up. A girls’ night! I mean what am I? Actually, Emma looked fine to me and I thought Amelia might be lying. I was upset with her for a while but we were still best mates, of course.

We wanted to go to the park that day especially because Amelia said she had something big to tell me, but she wouldn’t say what until we got out of the house. Bridie, Amelia’s mum, said we could go as soon as we’d helped Rose put all the toys away, but I never found out what it was because, while we were tidying, Amelia dropped the heavy wooden barrel-stool on her foot, and her little toe swelled up to about the size of a golf ball. She screamed the house down and, at the time, I felt embarrassed because I did think she was making a bit of a meal of it, but by the next morning her toenail had gone completely black and a few days later it came right off.
The doctor told her she was lucky she hadn’t broken anything and that toenails, like lizards’ tails, grow back, but it never did. “What do they know?” said Amelia.

I think I need to go home now. Can I go home? I need to sleep.

DCR: I’m sorry Caroline. I really need you to stay here, if you can possibly manage it. How about I find a quiet room where you can lie down for a few minutes, while I sort a few things out? I’ll come and find you again in an hour?
All right. Interview ended. I’m stopping the recording.


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