Before Her Eyes Read online

  A school kid found her, he thought to himself. He won’t sleep for months.

  ‘What a waste,’ Detective Inspector Lisa Elliott said, her eyes on the body by their feet. Her auburn hair glimmered in the setting sun. The lank black suit hung from her frame as though it was still on the hanger. The only bit of colour on her was the gold ring wrapped around her wedding finger. If she behaved at home like she did at work, Marcus didn’t envy Lisa’s wife.

  ‘We got a name?’

  Forensic pathologist Dr Ali Ling looked up at them from the ground where she was crouched beside the body.

  Marcus had only met Dr Ling once, when he had first joined the force in Balkerne Heights two months earlier. It was a quick exchange, sharing names as they shook hands, but there was something genuine about her that put him at ease; he could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice.

  Being in a small town with even smaller resources, Dr Ling and her team were also trained and employed as the crime scene evidence recovery unit. Men and women dressed in white suits filled the alley, snapping photos, bagging possible evidence with gloved hands and metallic tools. Someone was taking photographs of blood splattered up the bricks. They all looked the same, dressed in white from head to toe. The flash of the camera blotched Marcus’s vision and followed his eyes.

  ‘Driving licence says her name’s Cassie Jennings, twenty-five years old.’

  ‘Anything stolen?’

  ‘Not that I can see. We found two phones and a purse filled with notes.’

  ‘Two phones?’ Lisa asked. ‘Why would she need two?’

  ‘One’s a high-tech smartphone. The other is a cheap pay-as-you-go.’

  ‘You’ll need to check the call records from each phone,’ Lisa said to Marcus without looking at him. ‘I want to know why she has two.’

  ‘Could it be a work phone?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘Perhaps, but I want to know for sure.’ She looked down at Dr Ling. ‘Did she die from the neck wound?’

  ‘It appears so,’ Ling said, tucking an imaginary lock of hair behind her ear. Even though the white plastic suit hid her hair, it didn’t seem to break the habit. The mask over her nose and mouth muffled her words. ‘No signs of sexual activity at this stage, but I’ll confirm that after the post-mortem. I have yet to find any other wounds from the weapon that cut her throat, though again, we won’t know for sure until I flip her over.’

  ‘You’ll get your time with her,’ Lisa said. ‘Let us have a few minutes at the scene.’

  Dr Ling stood up and removed the mask from her mouth, leaving it dangling around her neck. ‘I wasn’t suggesting we hurry.’

  Marcus shook his head. Let it go. She’s on one today.

  The setting sun reflected in the dead woman’s eyes as if they were burning inside her skull. St Peter’s Alley was getting colder by the minute.

  Dr Ling cleared her throat. ‘There are no signs of skin deposits under her fingernails, but there’s bruising on her neck to suggest she was—’

  ‘Strangled?’ Lisa cut in.

  ‘No, but held with force. The splashes of blood on the wall –’ she moved up the alley and pointed to dark, crusting splatters against the bricks – ‘suggest she was first attacked here.’

  ‘So someone grabbed her and cut her throat, and she wound up over there.’

  ‘Probably trying to escape,’ Marcus said from behind them.

  ‘So the killer just let her get on with it?’ Lisa asked.

  ‘Watching her die might have been part of his motive,’ Dr Ling said. ‘All he had to do was step back and enjoy the show.’

  ‘He?’ Marcus asked. ‘How do we know it was a male killer?’

  ‘This scene doesn’t suggest a female,’ Lisa said.

  Marcus looked at the puddles, the lifeless eyes in the young woman’s skull, the wasted life splattered up the walls.

  Dr Ling watched him eyeing the crime scene for answers.

  ‘Female killers tend to choose people they know, and for a particular reason: rivalry, jealousy, obsession. Crimes between women tend to be … messier. This is more of an execution.’

  ‘What Ali is trying to say,’ Lisa said, ‘is that if a woman did this, our victim would look like a dead pig used for target practice.’

  Marcus looked down at the body apologetically.

  ‘Yes, it would most likely display multiple wounds, more rage.’ Ling made her way back up the alley. ‘What I did notice –’ she knelt beside the body – ‘was that the wound seems to have been made quickly but nervously. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was our murderer’s first kill, or his first kill in a while.’

  ‘But we don’t know if it’ll be his last,’ Lisa said. ‘Any initial signs of hairs or semen?’

  ‘We won’t know for sure until—’

  ‘The post-mortem, I know,’ Lisa cut in. ‘I asked for initial signs, Dr Ling.’

  ‘Semen?’ Marcus said. ‘I thought you said you hadn’t found anything to suggest sexual activity?’

  ‘Masturbation, Campbell,’ Lisa said coldly. ‘Just because he didn’t violate the victim doesn’t mean he didn’t stroke the pony while she died.’

  Marcus blushed.

  ‘Nothing yet,’ Dr Ling said. ‘Either sex wasn’t the motive, or he is good at tidying up after himself. The downpour last night didn’t help. We’ll examine the body for any traces.’

  ‘Okay, call me when you’ve cut the cake,’ Lisa said and made to leave.

  ‘Do you …’ Dr Ling paused, chose her words carefully. ‘Do you think this could be the same attacker as …’

  ‘Not a chance. That was twenty years ago.’

  Marcus looked between the two women, watched them speak without words.

  ‘All right,’ Ling said finally.

  Lisa walked off with a confident stride. Marcus followed behind her, building up the courage to ask what she meant by cutting the cake, until it came to him: the post-mortem.

  He looked back at the body and felt a pang of guilt for leaving her there. He wondered if it was possible to be lonely in death.

  ‘Well, that was useful,’ Lisa said wryly as Marcus shut the car door behind him.

  Sitting next to her in the confines of the car made his skin itch. He wiped his palms on his trousers.

  ‘No evidence at all. That place could be a gold mine in the right hands.’

  ‘You don’t think Dr Ling is qualified?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s smart,’ Lisa replied as she turned the key in the ignition. ‘There’s a difference. She looks for the obvious, not the hidden clues.’

  ‘But what if there aren’t any? What if the murderer is good at cleaning up after himself, like she said?’

  Lisa looked at him as though a child was buckling itself in beside her. ‘There are always clues, Campbell. You just have to find them.’

  She pulled away from the scene, thrusting Marcus into the back of his seat.

  ‘What was Dr Ling talking about just now?’ he asked.

  ‘The past. It’s all they do in this bloody town.’

  FOUR

  The sounds of the sea called to her in soothing whispers. Her nightgown flittered in the wind and brushed against her thighs. The wind tickled the palms of her hands and laced between her fingers, like warm hands leading her towards the cliff edge. When it appeared beneath her toes, peace washed over her until she was completely submerged in it, in the totality of what it meant to step into the unknown. For the first time, she wasn’t afraid to die.

  She rested into the wind and breathed in the salt of the sea. The waves were lapping beneath her, beckoning her down. Her right foot crept out. The breeze sent a shiver up her calf. She let the wind tip her forward and smiled the whole way down.

  Naomi woke screaming. It had all changed when she plunged into the sea. She had screamed for help beneath the waves and clasped her throat as the water forced itself inside her and choked the air from her lungs. As she sank, her ears popped with the pressure and the se
a salt clawed at her eyes. She inhaled until her lungs burst, just as her feet reached the sea floor and kicked up a flurry of wet sand.

  She sat up in bed and felt cold sweat snake between her breasts. A part of her was still in the sea, screaming beneath the surface, and for a moment she mistook the sweat for seawater dripping down her body.

  The house was quiet except for the sound of her neighbour, George, shuffling around on the other side of the wall. The chill in the room snuck into bed with her and cooled the damp sheets. She took her phone from the nightstand and asked for the time. It was late; she had crawled into bed the moment she got home from the cliff that morning, too exhausted to face the day, only to return there in her dreams.

  She patted the other side of the bed and felt nothing but sheets. Two years had passed and she still struggled to call the bed her own. In the slumberous limbo between sleep and waking, she sometimes forgot that Dane was gone. She thought of him in his own bed, a bed he shared with someone else. Now it was Josie who felt the warmth of his skin at night, and listened to the softness of his breaths as she drifted off to sleep with his arms wrapped around her. That was enough to make Naomi hate her, the woman she had never met, whose only crime was loving the man Naomi herself had discarded, at the price of breaking her own heart.

  She picked up his pillow and breathed in the scent. The aftershave he had worn since he received his first ever pay cheque evoked every memory they had shared, and the safety she felt when he was near. On bad nights, she spritzed the scent on the pillow; it was the only way she could sleep. She used to spray it every night, but now she only had half a bottle left. The line had been discontinued; when the shop assistant had told her, she’d had to bite back tears.

  She longed to move on, but couldn’t seem to let him go. Leaving him behind would mean losing a part of herself. She hated who she had become without him, and dreaded to think what would happen to her if she severed herself from him completely.

  Naomi crept out from under the sheets, wrapped herself in her dressing gown and made her way downstairs. Max rushed from his bed to greet her with his tail thrashing into the banister.

  ‘Hello, Max.’ She rubbed his head.

  She grabbed an armful of logs from the stack, arranged them in the fireplace, and waited for the flames to take hold before heading for the kitchen. Max followed her every step of the way.

  Once the fire began to eat away at the wood, she crept through the dark house and let Max out into the garden before feeding him quickly so she could return to the fire.

  The doorbell chimed. Max gave a bark from his dinner bowl.

  She was so used to being alone that she froze on the spot. The only visitors she had were her mother, her sister and Dane, none of whom she was expecting. The bell rang again. Naomi smoothed her hair and checked her breath in a cupped hand. She opened the door and closed her eyes as the night air hit them.

  ‘Hi, are you all right? I heard a scream.’

  George.

  ‘I’m fine, I …’ She considered lying, but swallowed it down. ‘I had a nightmare. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s a relief. I was worried you were hurt or something.’ He shuffled on the spot. ‘How have you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.’

  George was new to Balkerne Heights. He was in his mid-thirties, but had something about him that made him seem like an older, wiser man.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied. The tie on her dressing gown fell slack around her waist and the wind fluttered the hem of her nightgown. She crossed her legs and squeezed the silk of it between her thighs. ‘How are you settling in?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘That bad, huh?’

  He gave a nervous laugh. ‘People here don’t half fight friendliness from strangers.’

  ‘It’ll get better. Give them time. We’re not used to new faces.’

  ‘I’m sure any other neighbour would’ve slammed the door in my face.’

  ‘Well, I’m blind. I didn’t have the opportunity to peek through the curtains.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll let you get back to your evening. Good to see you.’

  ‘You too.’

  Naomi shut the door and turned on the answering machine as she headed for her armchair by the fire. She angled herself so her feet dangled before the flames.

  ‘You have two new messages.’

  One of them would be from her mother. Rachel was her mother whether they were blood relatives or not. She had been the one to find Naomi hidden in the corner of the bus stop, her small body hiding behind her jittering knees. With the fur coat and her eyes filled with terror, the little girl had reminded Rachel of a cornered feral animal. Despite that first impression, she’d taken her home and domesticated her until she learned to love again. Social services had called the adoption a match, because like Naomi, Rachel and her biological daughter Grace came from African descent. Years later, she still remembered the phrase with disdain; they had been seen as a match because of the colour of their skin, above their ability to love and nurture. She often thought how much better off society would be if everyone were blind and incapable of making judgements on a person’s appearance.

  ‘Hi, darling, it’s Mum. We missed you at the party today.’

  Naomi closed her eyes and sighed. The twins’ fifth birthday party. She had forgot all about it. Their presents were waiting on the sideboard by the front door.

  ‘Give me a call when you can so I know you’re okay.’ Her mother paused and took a small breath. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there was a murder in Balkerne Heights last night.’

  Naomi sat up in the chair and tucked her feet beneath her. She thought of her immediately.

  Hayley Miller.

  ‘People are saying it was Cassie Jennings. Poor girl. She was on her way back from her niece’s funeral, as if the family didn’t have enough going on. Make sure you keep yourself safe. You’re vulnerable, darling, so don’t go out after dark. At least until the person responsible has been found. Give me a call when you can, and don’t worry about the party. Grace will get over it soon enough. Love you.’

  Grace.

  Naomi wondered how her sister had taken the news of the murder. It had been twenty years since her sister’s best friend had gone missing. It was inevitable that those memories would be clawed up with Cassie’s death. Grace and Hayley had been as close as siblings until the night before her disappearance. Something had happened between them. Naomi had found Grace at midnight, sobbing into her hands in the dark.

  I can’t tell, Grace had whispered when Naomi asked her what had happened. She made me promise not to tell.

  Naomi had never told her mother about that night. Whatever her sister had done, she had to protect her – Rachel and Grace had taken her in when she needed them most. But whenever Naomi thought of her sister, she wondered about the secret she had harboured for twenty years.

  She turned on the TV, pressed the numbers on the remote for the local news segment, and held her breath so she could hear every word. The news broadcaster introduced a tape of a police press conference, headed by the lead detective on the case.

  ‘At three thirty this afternoon, the body of twenty-five-year-old Cassie Jennings was discovered in St Peter’s Alley. At this stage we do not believe the murder was motivated by robbery. We ask that anyone who knew Cassie, or anyone who was in the area between eight and ten p.m. yesterday evening, come forward with any information they may have, however seemingly insignificant. Balkerne Heights is a small town that doesn’t hear news like this very often, so I ask you all to be vigilant while my team and I work day and night to bring justice for this horrendous crime. I understand this is unsettling, but I want to assure every resident in the community that we will find the person responsible for Cassie’s death. In such a small town, there are few places to hide.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  St Peter’s Alley.

  Max’s claws tapped on the wooden floor as he entered the room.

  ‘I’m
sorry, Max.’

  He crossed the room and rested his chin on the armrest. She stroked the soft fur on his head, thinking of what had happened just last night in her town, so close to where she slept.

  That poor woman.

  The broadcaster spoke again in her neutral tone. ‘The murder isn’t the first major crime the town has experienced, with the controversial case of eighteen-year-old Hayley Miller still unsolved twenty years on.’

  Naomi turned off the television.

  To think that just that morning she had passed Cassie’s body, lying in the alley. Max had smelt death in the air. She thought back to the desperate hisses straining from his mouth, his claws raking against the path.

  Thank goodness I wasn’t the one to find her.

  She noticed the shaking of her hand as she pressed the button on the machine to play the next voicemail message.

  ‘Where were you today?’ Grace asked. ‘I know you’re there. Pick up.’ Heavy breaths crackled down the phone. ‘You’re their auntie, Naomi. You need to be there. Everyone was asking where you were.’ She sighed again. Naomi could almost feel the heat coming off the phone. ‘I’m sick of covering for you every time you hide away in bed. You can screw Mum and me around all you want, but don’t hurt my kids. It’s not fair. I needed you today. Hayley would have been there for me. I should have known you wouldn’t turn up. I don’t know why I bother, Naomi. I really don’t.’

  Naomi flinched as the message ended with a bang as her sister slammed down the phone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

  Grace hadn’t said the words, but Naomi had felt them rippling beneath her message. She would rather Hayley was alive than Naomi.

  Twenty years had passed, and still the town spoke of Hayley’s unsolved disappearance. Naomi struggled to pair the Hayley she had known with the Hayley who stoked the local whispers. They seemed like two different entities: one a sweet, vivacious teenage girl, the other a manipulative and promiscuous young woman who had slept with half the town.