had walked out into the street to shout her opinion of her stepfather to the world, publicly enough that he wouldn’t dare retaliate. Then she had taken herself and her plastic bag of clothes to a shelter she’d heard about. Sporting the bruises that were her passport inside the safe haven, she had settled down while she waited in the endless queue for social housing. Scars were examined. An offer to prosecute was made. Still Zoey couldn’t be so cruel to her mother that she could put the man who kept a roof over her head in prison. Even if he deserved it a thousand times over.
The sky came closer as she stared at the moon. A gust of wind danced through the branches of the trees above her, scattering a sheet of golden leaves over her body. A many-legged creature skittered over her neck, but Zoey didn’t mind. No point flinching now. In a while, all she would be was bug food. The road was long and straight, unadorned by regulatory white lines. She was in the countryside, then. The next car might not pass until morning. It would be an awful discovery for the poor driver, Zoey thought. Imagine starting Monday morning with such a monstrosity. That was if the car didn’t run over her.
The last seven days of her life had begun with a mistake. How many times were children told not to get too close to a car asking for directions? She had been distracted, wondering what to cook for dinner as she made her way to the local supermarket in Sighthill. Zoey hadn’t noticed the car following her, although she knew now that it had been. There had been no sixth sense as she’d cut through a car park between tenements. It hadn’t occurred to her that the man who wanted to know how to get to the zoo might have a large knife up his sleeve, ready and waiting to poke into the side of her neck. Get into the car or bleed out in the parking lot, had been her options. She wished she’d chosen the latter in hindsight. It would all have come out the same in the end.
In the passenger seat, knife pointed into her chest, he had told her to put on handcuffs. Her hands had shaken so badly that she hadn’t been able to close the locks until the fourth attempt. Just rape me, she’d thought. Just get whatever this is out of your system. Use me, then let me go. But let me live. Please let me live. I crossed so many days off in red pen. It’s not fair for me to die now. The man had driven her further away, beyond the scope of roads she recognised as she lay across the rear seat. No bravery had been lacking. She’d slipped a foot under the door handle and tried to prise it open, only to find the child locks engaged. Dark windows at the rear of the vehicle had ruined her chances of waving for help. Even attempting to hit the man over the head with her bound hands had won her nothing but a contemptuous laugh and an elbow in her eye.
‘Please don’t kill me,’ she’d said, as they’d finally pulled up into an overgrown driveway.
‘I’m not going to,’ he’d said. ‘But you’ve been a bad girl.’
‘What?’ she’d asked, her mouth dry with fear and the shameful knowledge that her bladder had allowed its contents to run away, even while the rest of her couldn’t.
‘I need you to say it,’ the man had said calmly. ‘You’ve been a bad girl, haven’t you?’
‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ Zoey had replied. ‘I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not bad. I’ve never hurt anyone. If you let me go, I promise I won’t say a word. I won’t get you into trouble.’
‘But you are a bad girl,’ the man said. ‘You’re disrespectful. You’re uncaring. You only ever think about yourself. Say it.’
‘I’m not,’ Zoey had cried, slinking away from him in the back seat. ‘I’m not bad. You don’t know me.’
At that, the man had climbed out of the front seat and opened the rear door. He was tall. His close-set eyes were such a dark shade of brown that Zoey couldn’t discern pupils from irises. He smelled. As he leaned over her, grabbing a handful of hair to wrench her off the backseat, she caught the whiff of rotten matter.
‘I’ll do whatever you want. You can … you can have sex with me. I won’t fight you. If you want me to be a bad girl for you then I can be. Okay? I can be whatever you want,’ she had whispered, turning her face away as he pulled her to stand against him.
‘You see? How many seconds did it take for you to show me exactly what you are? Say it to me,’ he said.
‘I’m a bad girl,’ Zoey had complied, as he’d grabbed a handful of hair and marched her along the driveway towards a cluster of trees at the rear of the garden. The freedom with which he’d paraded her had signalled the end of hope. There could be no one around to notice what he was doing if he was so confident that they wouldn’t be seen.
‘Touching her is against the rules,’ he had muttered as they walked. ‘No touching. None at all.’
She had lifted her head to peer over the boundary bushes. Not a building in sight save for the one she was destined to enter. No one to hear her scream.
An owl hooted in the trees above her. Zoey had always loved owls. A snuffling sound came from the verge beyond her line of sight. It’s Warrior, she thought. Warrior’s coming to sit with me, and I’ll be with Daddy again. Nothing to be scared of any more. The stars reflecting in her eyes went dark. Edinburgh’s autumn was set to be long and cold.
Detective Inspector Luc Callanach brought his car to a halt on the verge of Torduff Road. A pair of curious horses watched passively over a six-bar gate as blue flashing lights destroyed the early morning peace. Pulling a hoodie over his t-shirt, he checked the time. Five thirty in the morning. The crime scene investigators were in the process of erecting floodlights around the scene to make up for the lack of sunlight. The weak October rays wouldn’t touch the ground until six thirty at the earliest. DCI Ava Turner pulled her car up behind his and climbed out in sports gear that had already seen a work out that morning.
‘Do you never sleep?’ he asked, as they fell into step together.
‘Is it a French thing, using a question as a greeting? Because in Scotland we tend to say hello first. Surely you’ve been here long enough to know that by now. What do we know about the victim?’ she replied, rubbing her hands together furiously.
‘I haven’t seen her yet,’ he said, peeling off his gloves and handing them to Ava. ‘Put those on, it’s freezing out here. It’s quite a long way up the lane. The route’s long and narrow, heading south towards the reservoir, so the squad have sealed off a full mile section. Scenes of Crime are already getting started. I gather it’s a single victim, young adult female.’
Ava showed a uniformed officer her identification as they ducked under yellow tape. ‘The usual pathologist, Ailsa Lambert, is on leave at the moment, so who’s looking after the body?’ she asked.
‘I am,’ a man replied from behind them. ‘Jonty Spurr. It’s nice to finally meet you in person, DCI Turner.’ He held out his hand, smiling. ‘Luc, it’s been a while. I would say it’s good to see you again, but not under these circumstances.’
‘Jonty,’ Luc replied. ‘What are you doing in Edinburgh?’
‘Stepping in for Ailsa while she looks after her sister. Had a stroke, I gather. I have a good deputy in Aberdeen, but you’re short-staffed here, so I’m on a temporary transfer. Shall we go and visit the young lady who’s waiting for you?’ he asked, handing them suits, boots and gloves. As they dressed, the forensics team erected an awning beneath the trees a few metres ahead of them, and the sound of a
