‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked him through tears. ‘I’ve never done anything to you.’
Her body tensed as he reached into his pocket and produced what looked like a small black box. He unzipped it and drew out a small pair of nail scissors, which he used to slowly cut away her sick-stained top. She didn’t bother fighting him this time. Instead, she sat in the dark, shivering in her bra. He had scissors in his gloved hands, and her ankles were still bound to the chair: she couldn’t go anywhere. Fighting him would only anger him further, and then where would that leave her?
‘Please,’ she said, as he pulled the last strip of cut fabric from her body. ‘Please say something.’
The man pulled a chair that matched hers in front of her and sat before her, taking her left hand in his. When his eyes met hers, briefly, she wondered why she hadn’t seen it before. Of course it was him.
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
Her nails were long and painted. He cut them methodically, filing each right down to the skin. At the third finger, he realised the nails were false. The realisation enraged him and he ripped at each furiously, bending them back and tearing the glue from the nail beneath. She cried out in pain. The noise only encouraged him.
He left the room.
The girl looked around her, desperately searching for something she could use to try to hit him with.
He returned. He sat back down in front of her. There was a pair of pliers in his hand.
‘No,’ she pleaded, hot tears stinging her eyes once more. ‘Don’t. Please.’
She struggled with him, but her efforts were futile. He hit her across the face, once, with an open hand, a blow hard enough to send her body reeling and the chair toppling back to the floor. He straddled her fallen body, reaching again for her hand. One by one, he ripped the real fingernails from each of her fingers.
At some stage, she passed out. She couldn’t remember everything that had happened between then and now, only that she had woken to find all her nails missing and her hands caked in dried blood. Her wrists were bound to the chair again; this time, at her sides where she could see them. She had screamed at the sight of her bloodied hands, at the memory of the pain and at the pain she still endured in the aftermath of what had been inflicted upon her, but her screams had gone ignored and she had finally fallen silent, still thinking about how she might escape this place.
Still knowing that she couldn’t.
When she had calmed slightly, she managed to shuffle the chair across the room, dragging it over the exposed wooden floorboards. She made it to the door, but when she got closer she could see it was locked. It had taken all her energy just to cross the room and a wave of frustrated tears swept over her, engulfing all hope and drowning her future.
She waited for death, praying for it, but it didn’t come.
Upon his last return, he finally spoke to her. He dragged her in the chair back to the side of the room where he had originally placed her and stood behind her, his hands resting on her shoulders, weighing her down. She heard him remove something from his pocket before she felt him take her long ponytail in his hand. The next thing she heard was the sound of scissors slicing through her hair, cutting the ponytail loose from her head.
‘I thought you might be different,’ he said, ‘but you’re just like all the rest.’
Her breathing had quickened upon his return to the room. Now, with him standing behind her and with her own hair tossed, severed, into her lap, she felt her heart slow until she was sure it would stop.
His hands tightened on her shoulders.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly through her tears. ‘Tell me what you want from me… tell me what I’ve done wrong. I’ll do anything, I promise.’
She didn’t mind begging now. Not when death seemed this close.
He was disappointed in her words. She was going to say anything she thought it might take to appease him. Her desperation – her pathetic snivelled words – only made him hate her more.
She waited for him to say something. She thought that if he spoke to her again, she might be able to get him to stop what he was doing. If she could get him to talk, and properly, she thought maybe she could talk him down. She thought maybe all hope wasn’t lost.
Then he cut her throat, and all her thoughts left her.
Chapter Three
Alex crouched alongside what was left of the body at the water’s edge. The river was high that morning and faster than usual, gushing south with an urgency that implied danger, as though the water wished to rid itself of something; which it had earlier that morning, spitting the corpse on to the riverbank where it was later discovered by an unsuspecting jogger who had ventured between the trees seeking privacy to relieve himself.
Alex turned her head and tried to find a clean pocket of air to inhale through the mask she wore. She felt sick to her stomach, yet the scene of crime officers milling around the tent and on the path along the park beyond seemed unaffected, as though young women washing up on riverbanks was an everyday occurrence in the city. She knew that after seventeen years in the force she should have become more inured to the realities of death, but it was yet to happen. She would shake it off, put on the face she wore to work each morning and move the images of what she’d seen to the back of her mind, from where they would later resurface to haunt her.
The north end of Bute Park had been shut off; the rubberneckers who had gathered to gawp at the drama unfolding had been moved along by officers. In the summer months, this area of the park would be packed with families and students, the stretch of widening river just a couple of hundred metres or so along becoming a swimming pool where, on better days, sun worshippers could cool off. Teenagers would jump from the bridge, competing with one another, showing off to friends.
At this time of year though, not even the most foolhardy would brave the water.
A tent had been erected to protect the body from the elements – though it had already been subjected to a prolonged assault in the water – and uniformed officers were now performing zone searches of the surrounding areas of parkland and riverbanks. Photographs had been taken, documenting the decomposition of the corpse and the abuse that had been inflicted on the young woman’s body both before and after death.
Alex had never seen a victim such as this. Her body was blistered and swollen, the water having ravaged and bloated her. Her ankles were tethered with cable ties; her wrists, the same. From them, tattered scraps of plastic carrier bags lay like litter on the ground, torn by rocks and the weight of water.
Something had gnawed at her skin, chewing through the girl’s flesh until angry red welts scarred her body. She was covered in bruising. On both hands, every nail was missing. The river might have ravaged her, but unthinkable horrors had been inflicted long before the water had its way with her.