Dead Like You

Rachael Ryan’s age.

Is that how Rachael Ryan would look now?

Dead like you? If you are not her.

In an attempt to ascertain her age more accurately, Nadiuska was now removing some of the skin around the corpse’s neck to expose her collar bone. As she did so, Joan Major watched intently.

The forensic archaeologist suddenly became increasingly animated.

‘Yes, look! Look at the clavicle, see? There’s no sign of fusion on the medial clavicle, or even the begi

Grace stared at the dead woman’s face, feeling desperately sad for her.

Rachael Ryan, is that who you are?

He was feeling increasingly certain that it was.

He remembered so vividly talking to her distraught parents on those terrible days following her disappearance at Christmas 1997. He could recall her face, every detail of it, despite all that had happened in the intervening years. That smiling, happy, pretty face; such a young face, so full of life.

Have I found you at last, Rachael? Too late, I know. I’m sorry it’s much too late. I apologize. I tried my best.

A DNA test would tell him if he was right and there was going to be no problem getting a good sample. Both the pathologist and the forensic archaeologist were profoundly impressed with the condition of the corpse. Nadiuska declared that it was better preserved than some bodies that were only weeks old, and attributed it to the fact that she had been wrapped in the two layers of plastic sheeting, and buried in a dry place.

At this moment, Nadiuska was conducting vaginal scrapings, carefully bagging and tagging each separate sample as she worked her way deeper up inside it.

Grace continued to stare at the body, the twelve years slipping away. And suddenly he wondered if, one day, he’d be in a mortuary, somewhere, looking at a body and nodding his head that it was Sandy.

‘It is quite remarkable!’ Nadiuska a

Grace could not take his eyes from the body. The long brown hair looked in almost obscenely fresh condition, compared to the wizened scalp it sprouted from. There was a myth that hair and nails kept growing long after death. The prosaic truth was that skin contracted – that was all. Everything stopped at death, except for the parasitic cells inside you, which revelled in the fact that your brain no longer launched the antibodies to destroy them. So as your skin slowly shrank, shrivelling, being eaten away from inside, so more of your hair and nails became exposed.

‘Oh, my God!’ Nadiuska suddenly exclaimed. ‘Look what we have here!’

Grace turned towards her, startled. She was holding up, in her gloved hand, a small metal object with a thin handle. Something dangled on the end of it. At first he thought it was a piece of torn flesh.

Then, looking more closely, he realized what it actually was.

A condom.

109

Sunday 18 January

He ripped away the duct tape covering Jessie’s mouth, and as he pulled off the last layer, tearing it from her skin and lips and hair, she croaked in pain, then moments later, almost oblivious of the stinging pain, began gulping down air. Momentary relief that she was able to breathe normally flooded through her.

‘Nice to meet you properly,’ he said through the mouth slit in his hood, in his small voice.

He put the interior light in the van on and for the first time she could get a proper look at him. Sitting on a seat, staring down at her, he didn’t appear particularly big or strong, even dressed in his macho head-to-toe motorcycling leathers. But the hood chilled her. She saw his helmet lying on the floor, with heavy gauntlets folded into it. On his hands now he just wore surgical gloves.

‘Thirsty?’

He had moved her on the floor, propped her back against the wall, but leaving her trussed up. She looked in desperation at the open water bottle he held out to her and nodded. ‘Please.’ It was hard to speak, her mouth was so dry and gummed up. Then her eyes darted to the serrated hunting knife he held in the other gloved hand. Not that he needed it; her arms were pinioned behind her back and her legs were still bound at the knees and the ankles.

She could kick him, she knew. She could bend her knees and kick out and really hurt him. But what use would that be? Just enrage him further, and make him do something worse to her than he already had in mind?

It was vital to keep her powder dry. She knew from her nursing days where the vulnerable points were; and from her kick-boxing training, where to land a venomous kick, one that, if she struck the right place, would disable him for a few seconds at the very least, and if she was lucky, longer.

If she got the chance.

She would have only one chance. It was absolutely crucial she didn’t blow it.

She swigged down the water greedily, gulping, gulping, until she couldn’t swallow fast enough and it overflowed down her chin. She choked, coughing hard. When she had finished coughing, she drank some more, still parched, then thanked him, smiling, looking straight at him pleasantly, as if he was her new best friend, knowing that somehow she had to establish a rapport with him.

‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she croaked. ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I know you will.’ He leaned forward and held up the knife in front of her face. ‘It’s sharp,’ he said. ‘Do you want to know how sharp?’ He pressed the flat of the cold steel blade against her cheek. ‘It’s so sharp, you could shave with it. You could shave off all your disgusting bodily hairs – especially your pubes, all soaked in urine. Do you know what else I could do with it?’

He kept the flat of the blade to her face as she replied, shaking in terror, almost in a whisper. ‘No.’

‘I could circumcise you.’

He let the words sink in.

She said nothing. Her brain was kicking off in every direction. Rapport. Must establish a rapport.

‘Why?’ she said, trying to sound calm, but it came out as a gasp. ‘I mean – why would you want to do that?’

‘Isn’t that what happens to all Jewish boys?’

She nodded, feeling the blade starting to bite into her skin, just beneath her right eye.

‘Tradition,’ she said.

‘But not girls?’

‘No. Some cultures, but not Jewish.’

‘Is that right?’

The blade was pressing so hard she daren’t move her head any more. ‘Yes.’ She only mouthed the word; the sound was trapped, by terror, in her throat.

‘Circumcising a woman stops her from getting sexual pleasure. A circumcised woman can’t have an orgasm, so after a short while she doesn’t bother to try. Which means she doesn’t bother being unfaithful to her husband, there’s no point. Did you know that?’

Again her reply would not leave her throat. ‘No,’ she mouthed.

‘I know how to do it,’ he said. ‘I’ve studied it. You wouldn’t like me to circumcise you, would you?’

‘No.’ This time it came out as a faint whisper. She was quaking, trying to breathe steadily, to calm herself down. To think straight. ‘You don’t need to do that to me,’ she said, her voice a fraction louder now. ‘I’ll be a good girl to you, I promise.’

‘Will you wash yourself for me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Everywhere?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you shave your pubes off for me?’

‘Yes.’

Still keeping the knife to her cheek he said, ‘I’ve got water in this van – warm ru