The Principle of Evil

08:46 a.m.

‘We’ve got to go to the police.’

‘And tell them what?’

Olivia was now losing patience, and paced the room. Rachel was already getting dressed, stumbling as she pulled her trainers on her feet.

‘I’ll tell them Nola’s missing and about the call,’ she rushed, grabbing her coat as she made her way to the front door. ‘They’ll help.’ Olivia, following behind, reached out and grabbed her hand as she touched the door handle.

‘We’ve got to work, Rach,’ she said, her eyes looking deadly serious. ‘Daryl wants to see us.’

Rachel was frozen by her words. Daryl wanting to see them suddenly meant one thing – trouble. ‘What’ve you told him, Livi?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, averting her glance from Rachel.

‘You’re lying to me.’

Olivia was silent, but her face gave her away. Rachel’s body tensed and she raced back into her bedroom and went to the bed. ‘I can’t believe you’ve told him what’s been going on, that I’ve lied to him.’ She reached under her pillow and pulled out a knife.

Olivia’s eyes widened. ‘What the fuck, Rach? You’re not taking that out with you. I’m not letting you.’ She grabbed her wrist, squeezing hard, but Rachel refused to drop the blade.

‘Don’t you remember how long it took me to heal the last time Daryl messed me up?’

‘He won’t touch you this time, I promise.’

‘I’m going to help Nola. I’m going to help myself.’ Tears were now falling down her cheeks. ‘I need to get away from Daryl, from all of this.’

‘You don’t know if the voicemail’s real or fake, Rach. Wake up!’

‘I heard her screams in the background.’ Her words ensured a long desperate silence between them both, until Rachel managed to find her voice again.

This time she spoke softly. ‘I heard her. She was crying for help. She said he was going to kill her, whoever he is,’ she said, dropping her knife to the floor. ‘I can’t ignore that. She wouldn’t joke about something like this.’

Olivia’s face softened. ‘I’ll go with you to the police, but let me call Daryl first.’

‘No!’

‘All right, no phone call,’ she said, putting her mobile back in her pocket, ‘but you got to talk to him sometime.’

Rachel nodded. ‘I know… Let’s just find Nola first.’

CHAPTER 4

Present Day

6th November

Ice crunched under her feet as she walked over the grass verge, towards the lake where the body had been pulled from the water. Smoke from the fireworks still hung heavy in the air.

The winter sun was just beginning to break through the darkness, lying low on the horizon, and as she walked towards the white incident tent ahead, she stifled a yawn.

It had been a long night for forensic pathologist Dr Danika Schreiber, having been on call, and she could barely keep her eyes open. She was met by Claire, who was shivering in the cold, puffing on a cigarette.

‘Thought you were giving up?’ Danika said as she placed her case on the ground next to her. Her faint German accent was still audible, despite the fact she had lived in England for several years.

‘It’s been a long night.’ Claire stomped her feet against the ground, trying to revive her frozen toes.

‘For us both. That’s why I’m late. The last job took longer than expected.’ She peered over Claire’s shoulder and stared out towards the broken ice floating on the water. ‘Is that where you found the body?’

Claire flicked her cigarette from her fingers and it rolled across the ground. She nodded as she exhaled a plume of smoke. ‘Yep, and it wasn’t easy dragging her up either. You’re bloody lucky it’s only one body as well.’

‘Yes, I heard you had to rescue a boy who’d fallen through,’ she said, pulling the hood of her Tyvek paper suit over her long black hair. ‘Where is DI Fletcher? OK, I hope?’

‘He’s gone with the boy to the hospital until we can locate the boy’s parents. From what information we got out of those drunken friends of his, the mother’s a lush and the father’s not much better. We’re having trouble finding them.’

They walked under the police tape and towards the incident tent. Danika pulled on a pair of overshoes, then thin blue plastic gloves, and followed Claire inside the tent. She was careful not to disturb any potential evidence, keeping to the plastic walkway which led towards the body. She squinted under the glare of the large spotlights, one in each of the four corners of the tent.

Both women looked down at the body. The face of a young girl stared back at them. Her body was naked, with a thick chain around her ankles. Danika stared at the heavy coiled links.

‘Someone weighted her down,’ she said, kneeling next to the body. Her eyes glanced over the girl’s face and down to her toes. Then she returned to the deep cut to the side of the neck. The remains of dried blood were partially spattered down the dead woman’s neck and chest, still visible despite having been in the lake. The water had given the blood a dull hue against the skin.

‘How long do you think she’s been under the ice?’ Claire said.

‘It’s hard to say at this stage. When someone has been in cold storage, it slows the process of decomposition. It will be hard to pinpoint a time of death.’

‘She’s not been in a fridge, Danika.’

‘Yes, but being under the ice has had the same effect to some degree. If she had been found elsewhere, there would be larvae, maggots… I could pinpoint the time period. There are no obvious signs of scavengers having tampered with the body, although I’ll know more when I’ve examined her properly, but it suggests maybe she’s not been in the water very long.

‘There’s a little orange tinge to the skin, which is to be expected as she’s been submerged, but it’s minimal. Again this would indicate she’s not been here long.’ She paused, frowning hard. ‘That chain’s a bit excessive. Even with it weighting her down, she’d have risen to the surface eventually, but you were lucky to find her now before the skin started to peel.’

Danika looked up. ‘It’s looking likely loss of blood is the cause of death.’ Claire cocked her head, looking at the body at a new angle as Danika continued. ‘She has a deep laceration to the side of the neck, most likely severing a jugular vein, carotid artery and the trachea. Death would have occurred within seconds, but she was probably killed somewhere else and dumped in the lake.’

‘Ensuring most of the evidence is washed away.’ Claire’s voice was stern. Danika nodded in agreement.

‘That’s why there isn’t as much blood here as there should be.’ She pulled herself up and snapped a glove off over her hand. ‘Wherever your crime scene is, it would’ve been a bloodbath.’

‘The blood would’ve been cleared up.’

‘Yes, but with the best will in the world it would be practically impossible to clear every last drop of it. There’ll be a scrap or fine trace of it left somewhere. It’s your job to find it.’

CHAPTER 5

Detective Sergeant Elias Crest rolled the biro he’d been chewing over his teeth, staring blankly at the newspaper on the table in front of him.

He’d been in Haverbridge CID less than a week and still he felt on edge. Moving back down south after living in Liverpool for the best part of eight years – five spent in CID – it was taking him time to adjust to his new surroundings.

It would take him even longer to adjust to working under yet another female DCI. His old Guv, DCI Meredith Glass, had been tough but she at least gave him the benefit of the doubt.

DCI Winters however… He chewed his bottom lip as he cast his mind back to his first morning. She’d shaken his hand, but gripped it tight. He’d wondered if that had been her way of asserting her authority without the need for words to be spoken.

He knew she would have seen his file. Seen the reason he was transferring. Not that he gave a shit about what she thought in that respect but still, it bothered him. He didn’t want her to have something she could hold over him, something she could use as leverage if she wanted.

Meredith Glass had tried that once.

He had smiled at Claire, in a vain attempt to hide his reservations. He’d asked her to call him by his first name, when she’d addressed him merely as ‘Crest’, but it had the opposite of the desired effect.

Her grip had tightened around his hand further, her face dropping any hint of a smile she may have expressed.

‘I try to make it a habit never to go by first names, Crest,’ she had said. He remembered how she’d given him the once over, head to toe, without any subtlety.

‘To you, I’m “Ma’am”, “Guv”, “Boss”… Yes?’ she’d said.

Elias had remained silent. ‘And “Bitch”?’ he’d thought, suppressing a wry smile.

He remembered feeling a boiling heat rise up inside him as she had explained what was expected of him.

‘You’ll be mainly under the supervision of DI Fletcher, a very competent and respected member of my team,’ she had said, watching his face carefully.

Elias had kept his eyes focused ahead. He knew when to pick his fights and when to merely observe.

And what was that last part she’d said? Something that had made him question what he was doing here. He grimaced as he remembered, her words echoing inside his head.

‘I have no time for men who find it hard to work under the authority of a woman.’

She had deliberately let that sentence hang there in silence a moment longer than she’d needed to.

Elias figured he’d deserved that. Still, his eyes narrowed, the memory fresh in his mind, eating away at him.

I wish I knew exactly what was in my file.

Then there had been that parting shot – ‘I won’t tolerate mavericks.’

It was these words that jolted him out of his reverie, back to the lunch room.

He eyed the few people that were gathered around the vending machine, and plucked the biro from his mouth, flicking it across the table with irritation.

He’d decided to sit on his own. He wasn’t in the mood for making friends. He’d had friends before he transferred, or so he thought. Where had they been when he needed someone to cover his arse? Watching their own backs, that’s where. Doing everything by the book. Sometimes rules had to be broken for the greater good.

He tried to push the thought from his mind, staring down at his lunch, but although the hot meal smelled delicious, he didn’t feel very hungry. Instead he added five heaped teaspoons of sugar to his coffee cup and slowly began to stir. He barely noticed DI David Matthews as he sat in the chair opposite him.

‘You’ll come crashing down about five o’clock if you’re not careful,’ he said, as he poured milk into his own cup. Elias stopped stirring, raising his eyes wearily, face blank.

‘Sugar rush,’ Matthews said. ‘You’ll be crashing in so many hours, mate.’ He gestured to the coffee. When Elias failed to acknowledge him, Matthews pushed his own cup to one side and folded his arms on the table. ‘She really isn’t that bad.’

Elias scoffed and shook his head in disagreement. ‘Why do you assume I have a problem with Claire?’

Matthews cocked an eyebrow. ‘Written on your face.’

‘Don’t take the piss.’

Matthews held up his hands. ‘I’m serious, mate, she’s just testing you. She likes to see how tough you are, and no offence, but you’re kinda falling at the first hurdle.’

Elias was having none of it. ‘I grew up in Brixton, mate. I don’t have to prove I’m tough enough. I’ve nothing to prove to her and my credentials speak for themselves. I’m not an idiot.’

Matthews sat back in his chair. ‘Look, I know she’s hard to get along with at first, but everyone agrees once they get to know her… Claire wouldn’t be Claire if she was any different.’

‘I have no intentions of getting to know her on a personal level.’

Matthews chewed his bottom lip, taking in the new DS carefully.

Elias was in his mid-thirties, dressed smartly, with fashionably messy hair that was streaked with blonde highlights.

A pair of large hazel-coloured eyes looked back at Matthews, with a steely edge to them.

‘You got a problem or something, working under a woman?’

Elias practically scowled. ‘No.’

Matthews raised his eyebrows. ‘You sure about that, mate?’ Silence hung heavy in the air. ‘’Cos if it’s a gender thing–’

‘It’s not.’

‘It’s pretty old-school, thinking like that.’

‘I respect women officers… good ones.’

‘DCI Winters not good enough?’

Elias paused, being careful. ‘I never said that.’

‘But?’

‘But… she does have a reputation.’

Matthews saw a little of himself in the new recruit, back when he first started his career as a PC. He also recalled his first impression of Claire when he started in CID. It would be hypocritical of him to be completely hard on Elias for his initial thoughts on their Guv. He ran his hand back through his brown hair and said, ‘You definitely won’t last five minutes with that attitude. She’ll eat you for breakfast, lunch and dinner.’

‘Who’s eating who for what now?’ asked Stefan, as he approached the table.

‘Claire,’ said Matthews, not taking his eyes from Elias.

‘Ah. He’s having reservations about his transfer.’

‘Yep.’

‘To be expected, I guess.’

‘We’ve all been through it.’

‘Yeah, I remember it well.’

‘You know I am sitting right here,’ Elias interjected. ‘You needn’t talk as if I wasn’t.’

Exchanging glances with Matthews, Stefan looked apologetic.

‘You’re right. Sorry, it was meant as a joke,’ he said, taking a seat beside Matthews. ‘Guv’s called a team brief in twenty minutes; see where we are with the body in the lake.’ He glanced at Elias. ‘You ever see anything like it before?’

Elias shook his head, but avoided Stefan’s eyes. ‘Saw my fair share of depravity, but this has a different feel to it.’

Stefan eyed Elias closely, noted his pale drawn face, and then glanced at the untouched food in front of him.

‘Did Claire actually have the power to make you lose your appetite as well?’ Stefan asked. Elias glanced up, and then looked at Matthews, who hid a smile in his coffee cup. He returned his gaze to Stefan and glowered.

‘Hey, I’m being serious,’ Stefan said, jabbing Matthews hard in the ribs. ‘Ignore him. He’s just glad Claire’s taken the heat off him in favour of you.’

‘That’s not fair, Fletch.’

‘Come off it, you love the banter, you practically ask for it,’ he said, winking at Elias. Matthews ignored him and picked up the newspaper on the table.

Stefan looked at Elias and thought he caught a hint of a smile.

‘You gonna eat that?’ Stefan pointed his fork at the full plate. Elias shrugged, then shook his head, pushed the plate aside and sipped his coffee.

Stefan sat back in his chair. ‘Did she give you the “no first name” spiel?’ Elias remained silent. ‘She does give that speech to everyone.’

Elias sat back in his chair, jutted out his chin in defiance. ‘You think I’m taking myself too seriously.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

‘Well you said it,’ Matthews quipped.

‘Ignore him,’ said Stefan. ‘Best thing you can do is not take Claire’s attempts to destroy you seriously. She’s as harmless as a kitten really.’

‘As far as harmless sharp-clawed kittens go,’ Matthews added, nose still buried in the newspaper. Stefan rolled his eyes at him.

‘Cut her some slack. She’s really been through it in the last year. What with all that uncertainty with her father and… ’

He trailed off when he saw he’d piqued Elias’s interest.

‘She’s tough,’ he said at length, ‘but she’s good. I’d trust her with my life, Crest. You just got to earn her trust and respect.’

Elias sat forward and looked stern again, his hands now clasped in front of him on the table. ‘You know respect works both ways, right?’

Stefan’s eyes narrowed, silently questioning.

‘I mean, I can see you’re her biggest fan n’ all that but I don’t need to know the inner workings inside her head. I’ll deal with her in my own way.’

There was a long pause as the two men stared at each other. Stefan raked his fingers through his floppy light brown hair, trying to work Elias out. Realising he might have spoken too harshly, Elias added, ‘Thanks, though… for the advice.’

He stood, drained the last dregs of his coffee and set the cup back down onto the table with a bang. ‘Team briefing now, yes?’ he said as he left.

Stefan felt Matthews looking at him.

‘Are we taking bets on how long it takes him to walk?’

Stefan watched Elias leave the canteen. ‘I think he’s gonna need training wheels that’s for sure.’

CHAPTER 6

From his desk, back in CID, Elias watched her through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of her office, talking into the phone glued to her ear.

Claire must have felt eyes on her, because she looked up, straight in his direction.

He looked away first.

‘And what’re you doing for Christmas? Have you been a good girl this year?’

Elias glanced up, saw Matthews was beside Claire as soon as she came out of her office. Her face turned from a frown to what he thought was the faintest hint of a smile.

‘I’ll probably be in my straitjacket,’ she said.

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Do I even want to know?’

‘My mother’s staying… Probably right up until Christmas.’

He laughed. ‘Don’t tell me Iris managed to prise herself away from the Costa Brava?’

‘Her once-a-year jaunt.’

‘When it’s this cold as well…’

‘She’s full of surprises,’ she said, as she took her place at the front of the room. After several seconds the room quietened down.

‘By a stroke of luck, we’ve already got some news on the body,’ Claire said, as she circulated some photographs of a young woman who, despite smiling, had eyes that remained dark pits, captured in time, the light never reaching them.

‘Nola Grant, twenty-three years old, prostitute.’

‘So our Jane Doe has a name,’ Stefan said, crossing his legs when he sat down in his chair.

Claire nodded. ‘Switchboard took a call from a girl claiming to be her flatmate, who reported her missing on the second. Her name’s Rachel Larson. She heard about the body in the lake and she said it had to be Nola, based on the significant tattoos described on the body.