Unsolved

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  Cal Lovett Files series Book 2 teaser

  CHAPTER ONE

  Canelo Crime

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Cover

  Table of Contents

  Start of Content

  For Will, Rachel and Adam

  PROLOGUE

  LAYLA, 1986

  Layla presses her face against the horse’s flank, soothed by the warmth of her body, the softness of the chestnut hair. Eager to be out, Ruby skitters; her hooves clatter on the chuckies and she traps Layla against the fence. As she pushes the animal’s side to move her away, Layla feels the thoroughbred’s coiled energy, a sense of danger and unpredictability. Quick to temper when crossed, the mare has bitten other riders in the past. Layla understands the impulse. Some days she wants to tear chunks off everyone around her, to gnaw her way out of her life.

  She tightens the girth and springs into the saddle, a fluid, effortless movement. Stephen has told her more than once that she looks at home on the back of a horse, though these days his admiration is tinged with something else, resentment at the way she treats him, or maybe envy – that there is one place she feels happy and it isn’t with him.

  She doesn’t need to press her legs into Ruby’s sides, just takes the reins and thinks forward and they are away, trotting out of the yard. She relishes the feeling of power beneath her. One touch and they could fly and be free.

  Then Jim rounds the end of the block, carrying a full hay net over each shoulder, wisps trailing in the breeze. She had hoped to make it up the track before he came back.

  ‘Layla, wait,’ he calls, his face dark with anger that she has left him the byres to muck out, the ricks to fill. It isn’t just that, she is sure. His words still echo in her mind. Cock tease. It makes her stomach clench, but she swivels in the saddle, waves, pretends not to hear or to care. She doesn’t have time for him today. She doesn’t have time for any of them.

  ‘Bitch.’ Jim spits the word but, thanks to Ruby’s rising stride, by the time it reaches her it has lost its power, falls to the ground, flaccid.

  At the top of the track she pauses to look back at the view, holding the side-stepping mare in place. Twenty-one years of growing up beneath these hills and the landscape is never static. Beyond the stables, she sees clouds racing across the patchwork Aberdeenshire countryside, notes the purple smudge of a distant rain shower. Now that she is free, her anticipation releases – delight spins beneath her navel at the thought of what lies ahead.

  She scans the yard below, makes sure no one is watching, then she turns the horse up towards the wood, gathers her for a burst of speed and the jump – up and over the ditch, wall and wire. Layla’s breath catches at what feels like a vertical spring. The breath-holding danger, and then she is out of sight, her heart galloping.

  They weave through the tight-knit trees, following the path that is not a path, the one only they use. The forest is close and primeval – alive with brilliant moss, neon-green and soft where it covers rocks in thick layers. Above her head, lichen is strewn among branches, as if some forgotten river rose here and left it stranded. The trees drip with moisture and the air feels alive, as if everything is pushing her forward, conspiring, leading her astray. Layla shivers at the notion.

  But then Ruby snorts, shakes her head to loosen the pull of the reins, and the feeling vanishes. The horse’s hooves slip a little on the sodden ground and Layla has to concentrate – must take care not to catch her leg on one of the tree trunks that crowd the narrow gaps they shimmy between.

  As they leave it all behind, she starts to breathe more evenly, to allow the tight defensiveness she wears to loosen a little. The horse walks more easily; they flow together, away from the things and the people that try to hold them down.

  She glances at her watch. Still an hour before she has to be there and the thought of it makes the hairs rise on her arms. She has time to take Ruby to the edge of the trees, to the wide fields where she can let the horse loose and her hooves will churn the soft ground. When the gallop is fast enough that fear flashes through Layla and the wind makes tears pour down her cheeks, then she can forget the world for a moment, forget her place in it and the cage closing in on her. There is only movement, nothing more.

  * * *

  It is dark when Ruby thunders into the stable yard: riderless, panicked. The horse’s red coat is dark with sweat; her eyes roll white and she foams at the mouth, her whole body shaking. The stable hands come running.

  Jim catches her bridle but she wrenches her head away from him and rears, squealing in pain. It is only then they see the deep gash on Ruby’s back leg, the blood pouring from her hock. It takes four of them to coax her into a stable but they cannot get near her. At midnight the decision is made. A vet shoots the horse.

  The decision to stop looking for Layla takes longer.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WEST MIDLANDS

  CAL

  Cal pauses as he turns the car into the farm track that leads to their house. From this vantage point, with the sun setting behind the trees in the distance, it looks peaceful, idyllic. The lights are off in Allie’s studio. Unusual. She is always out there, splattering paint on huge canvases, her brow furrowed and mind lost to her art, preparing for the latest exhibition or fulfilling the occasional corporate commission. She doesn’t enjoy those as much, he knows, but recently those jobs have been keeping them afloat.

  Reluctantly, he puts the car in gear and drives slowly between the fields to the house, with the American-style covered porch they fell in love with the moment they saw it, Allie heavily pregnant with their daughter. Then, it represented the promise of everything.

  When he gets out of the car, Rocket emerges from the house, the Labrador’s whole body wagging. At least someone is pleased to see him. Inside, there is a stillness that makes Cal’s heart judder – he used to have this sense of doom if he couldn’t immediately see or hear them when he came home. Over the past sixteen years those fears have become wisps of memory. But they’re coming back and he doesn’t know how to stop them.

  ‘Allie? Christina?’ he calls, following the dog towards the kitchen and relaxing when he sees his wife at the table, though her expression is not a happy one.

  ‘Where have you been? Didn’t you get my messages?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He is always apologising these days. ‘I was in the library. Preparing for… tomorrow. I had my phone on silent.’

  Something like fear sweeps across her face.

  ‘You’re seeing him again.’ Her voice is incredulous.

  ‘I have to.’ He sets down his bag, takes a breath to steady himself. ‘I can’t just walk away. Please try and understand, Al.’

  It’s the journalistic opportunity of a lifetime, and yet more than that. A chance to understand. He has to keep going.

  ‘For God’s sake, Cal, I thought you were listening.’ Allie’s cheeks are pink, and her eyes fill with tears. It strikes Cal that he can’t feel her distress, only see it from a distance. ‘Ever since those letters came you’ve been different. It’s scaring me.’

  It’s not just the letters. It’s the research, the rabbit hole, freefalling into impenet
rable darkness. Allie used to be his champion, but she can’t get behind him this time. In his mind the crime scene stills, the silent screams and the broken bodies. They’re always there, on the periphery, demanding answers.

  ‘Is this because I missed your gallery opening? I told you I was sorry.’

  Allie’s eyes darken with hurt. ‘It’s so much more than that, Cal. You’re changing; you’re different. Please don’t go and see him tomorrow. Not again.’

  ‘I have to go. You know I do. It’s all arranged.’ He turns away, alarmed at the sudden bolt of anger inside him. He is mildness, not temper. This is coming from somewhere new. Or someone else. Allie’s words have rattled him. ‘It’s just a few more times. Then I’ll be done and we can move on.’

  ‘What if it’s too late by then?’

  ‘What?’ He spins around, searching her face. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  Allie’s voice breaks, she drops her head into her hands. ‘I don’t know what I mean. You’re not yourself, Cal. You haven’t even asked me why I was calling.’

  He takes a breath, grips the back of a chair to steady himself.

  ‘I’m sorry. What’s happened?’

  ‘It was Chrissie. She disappeared from school.’

  ‘What?’ Cal’s heart starts a race in his chest. In his world, vanishing has terrible consequences.

  ‘It’s okay. She came home eventually. Walked half the way. She’s upstairs, but she won’t come out of her room. I just… needed you.’

  His wife sounds exhausted – their daughter has never been a challenging child. Neither of them knows how to deal with these recent developments. At sixteen, Chrissie is clammed shut and any attempt to prise her troubles from her only increases her vice-like grip on her secrets.

  ‘Has she said anything?’

  ‘No.’ Allie shakes her head and a tear runs down her cheek. She turns her face from him and swipes at it as if she no longer trusts him with the deepest parts of herself. Cal thinks about reaching out for her, pulling her to him. It seems such a simple, human way to react, and yet the chasm between them is jagged and impassable.

  ‘Shall I try and talk to her?’

  He doesn’t want to do anything without Allie’s permission, feels he has invalidated his right to decide by not being here earlier.

  Allie sighs, a twisting of frustration and sadness that he tries not to see.

  ‘You can try.’ She bites her lip. ‘Anything to avoid talking about him, I guess.’

  As he walks to the stairs, he hears the back door slam behind her.

  * * *

  Cal stands at the foot of the stairs for a moment. Blackness crowds his vision, images flicker on and off in his head. It frightens him; these snapshots of pain have come from nowhere. Have come from him.

  When he is calm, he ascends and knocks softly at his daughter’s bedroom door. Normally there would be music drifting out, the sound of chatting or a YouTube video, but today there is nothing. Maybe he can draw her out and they can all spend the evening together, do something normal, banish this creeping darkness. He has always been able to get through to Chrissie, their connection is a golden thread, unbreakable.

  ‘Go away, Mum.’

  ‘It’s not Mum, it’s me.’

  No reply.

  ‘Can I come in?’ he asks, turning down the handle slowly, and waiting. ‘I’m coming in unless you tell me not to.’

  He quickly steps into her room and his breath catches in his throat. She’s sitting on her bed, her hands wrapped around her knees, defiant pale face turned to him. The living, breathing reincarnation of another teenager.

  Her image is Margot’s, startlingly so. The power of genetics astounds him when he gazes at the inherited waves of reddish hair that frame her face. It takes him back to when he was nine years old. Nine years old and about to lose a sister.

  Cal looks sadly at the chair by the bed. Chrissie used to keep it clear for him, demand that he cuddle whichever soft toy was in favour, settle a blanket over his knees. Now it is covered with discarded clothes and papers.

  ‘I’m busy, Dad.’

  ‘Things to do, people to see?’

  She scowls, no hint of softening.

  It’s inevitable, he tells himself as he perches on her bed and she turns her face away like her mother did moments earlier, that a daughter will draw away from her father. It doesn’t mean anything.

  He forces himself to take a breath, struggling not to say the wrong thing.

  ‘You had Mum worried today.’

  It is the wrong thing.

  Chrissie snorts. ‘But not you. Because you didn’t even pick up your phone.’

  Cal’s heart rate stutters, he feels a closing down inside himself. It’s all too hard. He hasn’t felt this way for years, not since Margot vanished. He feels the urge to shout, to shake her, to get through to her. It frightens him. He does not want to be his father.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says instead, baring himself to her in the way he couldn’t to his wife, admitting it. ‘It’s this series I’m working on. It’s getting inside my head.’

  Some of the victims were Chrissie’s age. Snatched on the way to school, terrorised, discarded. Images seared in his brain. Close-ups of narrow wrists, bound with rope that burned and cut the skin. He swallows.

  Chrissie stares out of the window at the purple leaves on the copper beech shading the side of the house. Even through the fog of his own crisis he can see she is not okay.

  ‘What’s going on? This isn’t like you, walking out of school.’

  Her head jerks round.

  ‘How do you know what’s like me? You don’t know me. Not any more.’ She fixes him with sea-green eyes that brim with tears she is trying to hold back. He feels afraid of her, like he’s failing her without knowing how.

  ‘I want to help.’

  ‘Then leave me alone.’ She makes the words sharp then turns, facing away from him, eyes on the tree that has sheltered her since childhood.

  He doesn’t know what to do. Sits, for a moment, withering under uncertainty. Then he rises, slowly, goes to the door, wishing she would turn and tell him to stay, hating himself for floundering.

  From the doorway he glances back, torn, wanting someone to tell him what to do. In that moment he wishes for Margot: ten years older than him, sparky, wise – always on his side. He has tried to run from the pain of her loss but it is impossible, it only grows, finds new ways to work at him. Now, looking at Chrissie, he wishes so desperately that she were here. She would understand.

  But then, if she hadn’t gone, maybe none of this would be happening at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The building is daunting to approach. After several hours in the car Cal is stiff; he shifts the bag that holds his recording equipment further up his shoulder. He gazes up at Broadmoor’s Victorian façade, taking in its arched windows and the imposing gate that stands between him and the man he is here to meet. The famous clock tower shines in the weak sunlight.

  Dread runs through him. Every time he comes he is sure Dubois will cancel, change his mind, even at the final moment. Today he wishes he would. Last night’s upset folds shadows over him, but it’s more than that. He is afraid.

  Getting in takes even longer than previously. When he shows his photo ID, the guard studies it intently, no hint that he’s seen Cal before. He has his fingerprints checked; his bags scanned. The staff are always alert, on edge.

  ‘Leave your things in here.’ The man gestures to an open locker.

  Securing permission to take in even the most pared-back recording equipment required months of letters and the approval of the Secretary of State. He unloads the essentials – an ambient microphone only – and slides his bag into the locker. Even solicitors are not permitted to take in more than pen and paper.

  Alone in the blank interview room, he waits. He needs to settle his nerves, to pull on a mask quickly, or Dubois will see. The man is a snake, watchful, deadly. Cal is aware that he is being recorded by the cameras that litter the institution, mechanical eyes that probe every movement. He smooths his trousers with his palms, breathes deeply.

  As much as he knows he should, he can’t just walk away. His ratings have been on a downward slide for a while now. He may have been one of the first British true crime podcasters, shifting rapidly from dry radio documentaries to the new medium, but a tidal wave of competition followed. Cal’s producer, Sarah, barely conceals her impatience and he knows she is aggrieved to be landed with him, would take any excuse to offload the dead weight she inherited from her predecessor. He is on a knife edge.