Girl: Inside

Then

Damson Cottage – 1995

Daisy watched the ants walking in a line, carrying ragged parcels of leaves on their backs. They were like tiny soldiers, following the leader. Not all of them had leaves. In fact, hardly any of them. Most of them seemed to be just walking. Marching.

Daisy understood.

The ones that were marching were guards. Guard ants. They were protecting the others; the ones with the food. Even though they looked the same they were different. They were soldier-ants.

Daisy put her leg out on the hot paving in front of her. She was sitting with her back against the high garden wall, on the stone area they sometimes used for barbecues.

The day was hot, so the Mothers and Fathers had dressed them all in shorts. It was a celebration day so a Mother and Father and their two girls had come from another house.

Sometimes it was two girls. Sometimes it was one.

This time it was two.

When the lead ant reached Daisy’s leg it paused.

‘What do you think he’s going to do?’ Lucy asked. ‘The one at the front?’

Daisy smiled. She liked it when Lucy talked to her. She sometimes got lonely at the house. Even when the other girls visited, it was lonely. Even if another girl – a sister – lived with them for a while. Because all the fun and playing they did was only like butter on bread. The skipping and reading and writing was the marmalade. Just the thing that went on top to make it taste nice.

It wasn’t the bread. Because they were the bread. She was the bread.

The bread was the thing that was baked. The bread was the thing that was kneaded and stretched and left in the warm cupboard to rise. Then put in the oven to make the outside all hard and the inside all soft.

Daisy blinked, her brown eyes sparkling with diamonds of tears.

‘I think they’re going to turn back and find another way,’ she said, concentrating on the little creatures. The leader ant… Mr Leader… was walking round in circles. All the other ants had stopped. Daisy was amazed. How did they know? Maybe they had really high-pitched voices that she couldn’t hear. Like the ants in the cartoons they watched on the television sometimes. Or maybe their brains were somehow all connected. Like they were just one creature that had been split into lots of little creatures, but deep down they were still all together.

Daisy liked that idea.

Because you’d never be lonely then, would you?

Mr Leader seemed to be sniffing her leg. She wasn’t sure if ants had noses. They definitely had mouths, because she’d been bitten by them before, but she wasn’t sure if they could smell.

‘I don’t think so,’ Lucy said. ‘Why would they? It would take them a long time to find another way home, and then all the leaves might have gone off.’

Daisy wrinkled her nose. The salad leaves sometimes went off in the house, because it was so hot with all the windows sealed up. They started out crisp but then became limp and smelt horrible and went all liquidy.

She was still made to eat them though.

‘Because they’ll be scared of my leg. It’s hot and I bet my leg is really whiffy to an ant. If they have noses.’

‘Not to Mr Leader.’ Lucy’s voice was firm. ‘He won’t be scared whether he’s got a nose or not.’

That was one of the things about Lucy. She was always so sure. Even when she was wrong she was somehow right, because she was always certain.

Daisy wished she could be more like Lucy sometimes, but she knew she couldn’t. That wasn’t how it worked. Everyone had to be themselves.

Mr Leader went round in a circle one more time then made up his mind. He began climbing up Daisy’s leg. She giggled as the rest of the ants followed him.

‘I told you,’ Lucy said. ‘Mr Leader doesn’t mind a smelly leg. Not when he’s on his mission. He just finds the quickest way back to safety. If he had to lead them all around your leg then it would take ages.’

Daisy was pleased she wasn’t Mr Leader. She didn’t think she’d be brave enough to climb up a leg. She tried to stay still until all the ants had done their Daisy-march. Up and over her. Marching along in their line of little black bodies with their little prickly legs. Just as the last one climbed off her, onto the stone paving, the bell rang.

Daisy pulled her legs up to her chest. With the sound of the bell, everything seemed to go a little colder.

Because it was her turn today. For the celebration. The Mother who had been the Breakfast Mother had told her. She’d told her with the special smile they reserved for Becoming Days. The hungry smile. The smile when their teeth seemed bigger.

Lucy took hold of Daisy’s wrist.

‘Don’t worry. You don’t have to be the bread today, Daisy. You’ve been the bread enough times already.’

Daisy stood. She could still feel the ant’s tiny, prickly legs on her skin. Ghost legs on her ghost skin. Lucy slipped her hand into Daisy’s.

‘All you have to do is count and walk with me, and I’ll do the rest.’

Daisy looked across the garden. One of the Mothers – Heather – was standing by the door to the cottage. She was dressed in the pinafore all the Mothers wore, a dark blue with a big pocket at the front. The eating pocket. She was ringing the big brass bell, swinging it in her hand, smiling at the girls.

‘Do the words, Daisy.’ Lucy’s voice was soft and strong at the same time. ‘Just say the beginning.’

Daisy took a shallow breath, squeezing Lucy’s hand. ‘One,’ she whispered.

‘That’s it,’ Lucy encouraged. ‘Now let’s walk together. And I promise you won’t have to be at the front. By the time you get to five, I’ll be at the front. I’ll be Mr Leader.’

‘Two.’ The word was squeezed out. Heather was looking at her, smiling. Waving with one hand while the bell swung gently in the other. Gently and gently until it stopped. All the other girls had gone past the Mother, into the cottage, ready for their lessons.

Heather stepped forward and shut the door behind her.

Daisy felt her heart stutter behind her ribs. ‘Three,’ she whispered.

‘Daisy!’ Heather, smiling with her cooking eyes, beckoning with her kneading hands. ‘It’s one of your special days today! Just wait there a second while I make sure the room is ready for you.’

‘Four.’ This time the word never made it past her lips.

‘It’s all right,’ Lucy whispered, squeezing her hand. ‘You go for a sleep now. You’re tired from carrying our leaf. You go to sleep and I’ll be Mr Leader. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to wake up.’

Daisy nodded and closed her eyes.

‘Perfect. They’re all ready for you now, Daisy.’

Lucy opened her eyes.

Heather took hold of her hand and walked her to the other door. Not the one that led into Damson Cottage, but the one that led under it. To the cellar where The Fishermen performed the Becoming.

‘Don’t be scared, Daisy,’ Heather said, her hungry smile concrete around her eating teeth. ‘All we are doing is making you better. Making you all better.’

‘I know, Mother,’ Lucy said, smiling, happy that Daisy was deep inside, sleeping in her cave.

Safe.

Protected.

Five, Lucy finished. Once I caught a fish alive.

Then walked into the room with Heather, the door shutting behind her with a solid clang.

Daisy is ten years old.

Now

Wakefield

That he was going to die, he had no doubt. That wasn’t even the problem.

Everybody died. That was life. In fact, one could say that was a prerequisite for life; a side effect of being born. As soon as you took that first breath of air you were dying. Second by second. Day by day. Year by year. It was inevitable.

It was just that he didn’t want to die this way.

He spat blood onto the floor. The liquid was almost black in the gloom of the room.

‘Why?’ he croaked.

Despite the beating, he still had some vision. Not much, it was true, but enough.

‘It’s nothing personal, Victor. You’ve been compromised, so I’m afraid you are more of a burden than an asset. That’s all.’

Slane smiled brightly at him. What little light there was seemed to find its way to her teeth, like the mouth of a shark in the deep dark.

She leaned in, whispering in his ruined ear.

‘And after the Daisy fiasco, I’m sure you’d like to make up for the shitstorm you let happen under your watch. Dying is the best solution.’

‘Not my fault,’ whispered Victor, but his voice barely reached beyond his lips. He could feel all the cuts on his body. All the stab wounds the screwdriver had made. All the burns on his skin. He’d told Slane everything he knew. About Jay and Joseph; everything he’d been able to find out before he left.

‘Oh, but it was, Victor. You should have known Cummings was in your town. You should have known Daisy was in your town.’

Slane pushed the thin shaft of the screwdriver through Victor’s skin and muscle and into his stomach, causing him to gasp.

‘And you absolutely, positively should have known about Jay’s capabilities.’

Slane slowly rotated the shaft, opening the wound.

‘Because she didn’t just get lucky, Victor. She was a one-woman wrecking machine.’

Slane pulled the screwdriver out, then wiped it clean in the chief inspector’s hair.

‘We’re on the same side,’ whispered Victor. He couldn’t see anything anymore; everything seemed to be drifting away from him, becoming cobwebbed. ‘Why are you doing this?’

Slane ignored him, pushing the shaft into him again, this time through his temple. ‘And then you sent her to me. You’re lucky I’m only killing you, Victor.’

Victor didn’t say anything else, the last puncture by the screwdriver having killed him.

Slane looked down at him, a slight frown of disappointment on her face. ‘You could at least have lasted a little longer.’

She straightened up, stripping off her nitrile gloves and placing them in the metal bin next to the body. ‘Right, burn everything and break down the room. We need to be elsewhere. Do we know where Daisy is yet?’

Slane raised an enquiring eyebrow at Grant. Behind her, Victor’s body was dumped into the industrial drum by a woman wearing a protective visor and gloves. Once in, she poured a milky liquid on top of the dead man.

‘We tracked her to Blackpool, but since then she’s gone quiet. As far as we can tell she had a couple of months’ supply of meds, but that will nearly be tanked, so she’ll need to restock soon.’

Slane walked away a few feet and lit a cigarette.

‘Okay. What about the others? How many are left?’

‘Five that we have found, not including ours. We have them under surveillance.’

Slane clicked her teeth in thought, then nodded. She looked at the drum containing the remains of Victor Braughton, formally Chief Inspector of Leeds Metropolitan police, her head slightly on one side as if she were looking at a particularly interesting picture. The woman in the safety gloves was screwing the lid on.

‘And are they like Daisy?’

‘Unknown. Obviously, now we’ve been alerted we’re searching for signs.’

‘Okay. You and Marilla finish off here. Make sure it’s clean. Do we know why Blackpool?’

‘Not yet.’

Slane stared at the drum, as if she could see through it to the murdered man.

‘Because it’s a bit of a bloody coincidence, isn’t it?’

Grant shrugged. ‘Maybe. As I said, we don’t know.’

Slane smiled. It was like watching an old scar rip apart.

‘Once you’ve finished off here we’ll go and find out, shall we?’

1

Jay’s body hurt, but she didn’t mind. On one level she even welcomed it.

Pain was good. Pain meant she was still alive and kicking.

Pain meant she still had skin in the game.

As she ran, jolts of white fire passed through her knee and her chest, and her heart.

She gritted her teeth and pushed harder into the wind, her feet pounding the narrow track through the snow-covered moor.

And another thing about pain was that it could be passed on.

In the two months she had been out of the hospital, her ribs had healed and the cuts and bruises had disappeared, leaving only an upside-down tick of white scarring on the left side of her forehead and a permanent pain in her right knee. The doctors had told her she had been lucky. The kicking to her chest could easily have punctured a lung, and had the knife that slashed her been any lower she might have lost her eye.

The freezing sleet ripped through her as she jogged across the moor; saltwater mixed with hail stinging her skin like she was running through wasps. Her breath came out in hard grunts as she pushed herself off the track and along the stony path at the cliff edge. The sea below was a boiling mass of muddy grey and dirty white. She chose her footing carefully. Snow and ice made the narrow path treacherous. Her knee, broken and dislocated, the tendons torn when the murderer posing as Daisy had repeatedly stamped on it, as well as giving her constant pain, was still not reliable. She had undergone two operations and many hours of physio but still found herself needing a cane by the end of the day.

But that was okay because she could totally rock a cane. A cane made her look distinguished, along with the crew cut she had decided to keep after she had shaved off her dreads. That, coupled with the scar, gave her a slight piratical look that almost begged for an eyepatch. Possibly with a skull printed on it.

Plus, a cane could be used to smash the brains out of anybody who might stand in the way of her finding Daisy.

Slane. Grant. Her old boss, Chief Inspector Victor lying-cock Braughton. Any of the so-called Fishermen.

Jay smiled grimly as she headed away from the edge and back across the moor towards Joseph’s stone cottage. With the wind behind her, the going was easier; although the bitter sleet on her back was like being shot at by a million pea-shooters full of nettles. As she ran she felt the hard ground beneath her, telegraphing its solidity up though the leg to her knee with every step. A repeating pulse of pain like a body clock.

By the time Joseph’s little house blurred into view across the scrub and driving sleet, she was limping heavily and covered in sweat. She barrelled through the wooden door, staggered across the kitchen and into the study where the fire was crackling in the grate. Joseph looked up from his laptop as she came in and flopped on the daybed.

‘Fuck, it’s cold out there! Why can’t you live somewhere warm?’

Joseph poured a cup of coffee from the thermos on his desk and stood.

‘Nice run?’ he said, handing the steaming mug to her.

She smiled up at him.

‘What, with the wind, the snow, the crumbling almost-certainly-going-to-die-on-the-cliff path, and the killer sea?’

He nodded, pouring himself a cup.

‘It was beautiful,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what it is, but the starkness of it…’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘…Kind of reflects how I feel.’

‘How’s the knee?’

‘Like a tiny knee-bomb.’ Jay winced. ‘Have you had any hits?’

She nodded at the computer. Joseph had been running a search on the medication Daisy had been taking whilst Jay had known her – Aripiprazole; Risperidone, or variants thereof. Drugs that were not easy to score on the street. To get hold of them she would have to secure them on the black market; stolen to order, or sign herself up for a psychiatric program.

And there was no way she was ever going to do that. Daisy had led her adult life off the grid, petrified that the cult she had been kept in as a child would find her.

Find her and take her back to finish what they had started.

There wasn’t a chance in hell she’d join a legitimate medical practice.

Which meant she’d need access illegally.

Consequently, Joseph had set up a program to cross-reference the names of the medications to likely candidates. Chemist break-ins. University audits of controlled drugs. Psychiatric hospital disciplinary hearings that could indicate orderlies caught selling pills. Anything that might mean the drugs were being requested on the stealth-markets.

‘Nothing yet, but it’s early days. You have an email, by the way.’

Jay frowned. When she had been released from hospital, Joseph had offered to let her recuperate at his cottage on the Yorkshire moors. No one knew she was there; they both thought that, considering the people who had tried to kill her were linked to the police, discretion was the best solution. Joseph had set her up with a secure email account so she could stay in touch with her medical liaison officer, a minimum requirement by her department.

Joseph handed her a slate and she quickly read the message.

‘It’s from the new chief. She wants a meeting next week to discuss how we can integrate, going forward.’

Jay gave a harsh laugh.

‘Integrate going forward. What a load of bollocks. Can’t these people speak in normal sentences?’

‘I think they are normal sentences. Not everybody needs to substitute every other word with swearing.’

‘That’s because they’re not as comfortable with linguistic experimentation as me.’ Jay read the rest of the email. ‘I bet they’re going to put me on desk duty as a reprimand.’

‘Linguistic experimentation?’ Joseph raised an eyebrow. ‘Have you been reading my books again?’

Jay stuck her tongue out at him.

‘You’ve been practising raising one eyebrow, haven’t you?’

Joseph sighed. ‘Desk duty would be the sensible option. You’re hardly in a physical position to be running around Leeds, are you?’

‘It’s getting better,’ Jay said, rubbing her knee. ‘The physio says it’ll make a full recovery.’

Joseph nodded non-committedly.

‘In time,’ she insisted.

Joseph looked at her. She looked away; out of the window. The bleak day beyond ignored her.

‘Probably,’ she finished lamely.

Joseph smiled, re-seating himself in front of his computer.

‘I think I’m going to set up a trawl-bot for the mermaid tattoo. As the picture was found on all three of the dead individuals it seems a good bet that it would be on every member of The Fishermen, as well as the girls they abused. If what Slane said was true; that there are active members of the cult in positions of power, then there might be a chance some of them will have appeared on a media outlet. Or perhaps social media.’

An image of the smudged mermaid inked onto Daisy’s hip flashed across Jay’s mind. She blinked it away.

‘And you think they’d just wave their creepy tattoos in public?’

Joseph made a circle with his thumbs and fingers.

‘Holiday snaps. Or in the background of somebody else’s holiday snaps. It’s not just the traditional press from which a carefully written search bot can mine data. Any social media platform where the person has their setting on public is fair game too.’

‘Is that hard? Setting up a bot?’

Joseph shook his head.

‘You can just have them made to order these days, built by hackers for hire. All they are, essentially, are task-specific search indexing programs, only for images rather than words. Anybody with any decent coding experience could do it. You don’t need to be Mr Robot.’

Jay looked at Joseph appraisingly. She hadn’t enquired too deeply into his past. He’d told her how he’d met her mother, when she was an activist, fighting for the rights of the underrepresented. She knew that he had experience with the structures of cults around the world. But she didn’t know anything about his personal life, beyond this small cottage in the middle of nowhere. She sensed a sadness but hadn’t wanted to press. He’d used a fictional son, Mark, as a cover in their takedown of Slane, but she was sure there was more to the story.

‘I get it. Like Cambridge Analytica or whatever. We all leave information trails when we use the net.’

He nodded, clearly animated by the subject.

‘Thousands of data points.’

‘And you have the skills, do you? To build one of these bots?’

‘I have an understanding of how the coding works but…’ He glanced round at his various screens and gadgets. ‘…I’ve always preferred dealing with the end product. I have a friend who is more on the front line with this sort of thing.’

Jay didn’t say anything but she had a suspicion of who he was talking about. Not the exact person, but the sort of person. Someone who was good at gleaning information. Someone Joseph would have worked with getting into difficult parts of the world.

Someone like a journalist. Or maybe another academic who worked on the fringes like him.

‘Right. A search bot is a good idea. Have you got copies of the tattoos then? I’m surprised the images were released to you,’ Jay said. ‘I know they employed you as a physiological profiler, but you were never officially linked to the case or anything.’

In the aftermath of the operation that secured the data from Slane’s Leeds headquarters Joseph had fleetingly been an outsourced