A Ruined Girl Read online

  ‘A tense, unsettling and emotionally engaging whydunnit that grips from the first page’

  Sophie Hannah, author of Haven’t They Grown

  ‘Gritty, tense, superbly plotted and the run-up to the end left me breathless and a bit of an emotional wreck’

  Harriet Tyce, author of Blood Orange

  ‘A complete triumph. An intelligent and deeply satisfying thriller with such vivid characters it’s impossible to believe they aren’t real’

  Elizabeth Haynes, author of Into the Darkest Corner

  ‘Superb. A rare combination of stunning twists and exceptional prose makes it the perfect read’

  David Jackson, author of The Resident

  ‘Layer upon layer of secrets, making for a perfectly paced page-turner. Past and present are woven together beautifully’

  Robert Scragg, author of What Falls Between the Cracks

  ‘Immersive and compelling, authentic and raw’

  S.E. Lynes, author of The Women

  ‘Everything you want from a novel – the grimy realism of the best crime, and the perfectly executed twists of the best psychological thrillers’

  Dominic Nolan, author of After Dark

  ‘Assured, gripping and with a twist I did not see coming. Fantastic’

  James Delargy, author of 55

  ‘A mesmerising tale of justice and redemption, which will have you spellbound. One of the rising stars of crime fiction’

  Trevor Wood, author of The Man on the Street

  A RUINED GIRL

  KATE SIMANTS

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

  VIPER

  part of Serpent’s Tail,

  an imprint of Profile Books Ltd

  29 Cloth Fair

  London

  EC1A 7JQ

  www.serpentstail.com

  Copyright © Kate Simants, 2020

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset in Garamond by MacGuru Ltd

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 78816 597 6

  eISBN 978 1 78283 742 8

  For my parents

  Night. Real, dense, outdoors night. Nothing like the safe, half-lit gloom he’s known from a life in the city. Here, the trees all around hold the darkness tight, pressing it in. Behind him, the distant thrum of the M32, but so low and constant that it’s just a layer under the silence, like silt. Apart from that, nothing. Just the thud and scrape of his spade striking the earth, pulling loose, striking again.

  There’s a ghost of rain, cold and drifting so fine it might as well be dust, sticking to everything. But the boy isn’t cold, because digging is hard, hard work. Has he ever even done it before? At his old house? He remembers the garden as he brings the spade down. The flowers. They spread and bloom in his mind, and he colours them in reds and purples and blues and the world is made vivid again. His mum grew them; he must have helped. He must have gardened.

  But that wasn’t the same as this. Gardening is for growing things.

  This is something else.

  The spade is starting to grind now that he’s getting further down. The top layer was easy: twigs and leaves and mulch all softened from the winter above and the rot below. Now, waist-deep, it’s getting stony. He stops, breathing hard. He lets the long handle fall against the side of the pit – he’ll call it a pit, because that’s as far as he can let this go, in his head. He pushes his fists into his spine, gets his breath back. Listening, watchful, although he’s been here enough times to know how rare visitors are. Without passing by boat, on the water that’s just a few feet away, it would be hard to know the clearing was here at all. He turns to watch the river, immense and silent, sliding blindly west towards Bristol, and then Avonmouth, and then the sea. He thinks of the thing they did at school about the water table. If he digs any deeper, any minute now he’s going to hit it.

  His pit isn’t as deep as he wanted, but it’ll have to do. He turns to tell the man, but he has to scan the blackness for a moment until he spots him, crouching, at the edge of the clearing. Head in his hands. Could be crying. The boy doesn’t care.

  He climbs out of the pit and switches on the torch, keeping the beam low to the ground. Right at the edge, there’s the girl. Lying on her side exactly where he set her down. Facing him.

  He wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve. Considering the size of her, considering how he could practically circle her waist with his hands, getting her here from the car they had parked maybe half a mile away was like carrying a sack of rocks. Dead weight: that’s what it’s called. He had to keep shifting the load, her stomach folded across his shoulder. Closer to her than he’d ever dreamed, his hand splayed across the back of her thigh, holding her steady in the fireman’s lift. The man could have done it but the boy wouldn’t let him. That was the deal. He’d go along with whatever the man told him afterwards, but they would do this part his way.

  He closes his eyes now and runs it back, cementing the feel of her in his memory. The swish of her hair, hanging down behind him, thick enough to feel it brush against his jeans. He replays the sensations of it, the bounce of her hands against the backs of his knees. Had he felt the contours of her chest, upside down, below his shoulder blades? Yes. He tells himself it’s real, something recalled, not imagined. He had felt that. And the warmth of her skin, even through the clothes? Yes.

  The beating of her heart?

  He opens his eyes. Swallows hard.

  Yes. He wants it badly enough, so he takes the blank and fills it with the detail and then it’s there, in his version of it, for good. He remembers it all.

  Half covered with the battered tarp, she is motionless. The tips of his fingers sing with the desire to reach out and touch her. They ache with it. The drizzle has sunk into her hair, binding the strands into damp cords; it’s settled into a sheen on her face, catching scraps of light that skitter across the ground as the canopy of leaves shifts above them. Her eyes are closed. Her black-and-red checked shirt clings in sodden folds around her, and the tarp lifts and falls in the breeze, as if it is breathing. And she is beautiful.

  She is beautiful.

  He forces himself to look away, and pulls the sheet up over her head. Then he calls over to the man in a low voice.

  ‘Ready.’

  It’s not a question. It’s a command. He is in charge.

  The man rises like he’s a hundred years old, like it’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do. Hands shoved deep in his pockets he comes over, close to where she’s lying.

  ‘Anyone finds it,’ he says, jerking his chin towards her, ‘it’s on you.’

  ‘I know,’ the boy says.

  ‘I still think we should burn it.’

  The boy shakes his head, but the man is eyeing him. Wants convincing. So the boy says, ‘The rain. Too damp. And even if we could, there’d be the smoke. The smell. Not worth the risk. This way is better.’

  The man prods at the shape under the tarp with the toe of his shoe. ‘Let’s get it done then.’

  ‘No!’ The boy’s shout is thin and high with panic, and the man snaps round and his eyes shine silver in the darkness. He puts his hands up, surrendering.

  ‘Jesus. What?�
�

  ‘Don’t even fucking touch her,’ the boy says. Spits it. And it’s all he can do not to drive him into the pit instead of her. Grab the spade and swing the edge against the side of his head. But he doesn’t do it. He made a promise.

  Because she is his. Seven months he’s loved her, and tonight he’s done something for her that no one else could do, and no one else will ever know, and he will do every part of it himself, and that means she’s his. It makes her his. He breathes hard, staring at the man. Teeth tight. He could kill him. He could.

  The man steps back. ‘Do it then,’ he says. ‘Go on.’

  And the boy does. He sits at the edge of the pit like he’s getting into a pool, and he lowers himself down. Gets his hands underneath her armpits, careful to keep as much of her covered with the tarp as he can. He starts to pull. At first she doesn’t move, and then there’s the sound of a tear, fabric, and oh god he hopes he hasn’t hurt her. He winces, but he keeps pulling, and all of a sudden the resistance is gone and she pitches in, shoulders hitting him awkwardly against the fronts of his thighs. He staggers back, recovers, and lowers her down. Softly. Soundless.

  He moves her so she’s lying on her side, her back to the man, and lays the tarp out again, taking care to keep it a little way from her face.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the man says. ‘It’s not like she’s going to suffocate.’

  The boy takes a last look at her, at the smears of black under her eyes, the tiny silver gem-studded star at her neck on a chain so fine you almost don’t see it. And then he starts to climb out.

  Until the man says, ‘Hold on.’

  ‘What?’

  From his pocket, the man brings out a flick-knife. He tosses it down, and the boy catches it.

  The man half turns away, his lip curled like she is something disgusting. ‘Clothes.’

  The boy’s heart stops still.

  ‘Her clothes,’ the man says again. ‘They’ll have fibres on them. From both of us – our hair. Particles. Say they find her. You want them finding those?’

  The boy says nothing. The knife is impossibly heavy in his hand.

  ‘Cut them off,’ the man tells him. ‘We’re going to burn them. And ours, to make sure.’

  The boy looks down at her. The rain is still falling, little puddles forming, black like oil.

  He can’t take her clothes. He can hardly bear to leave her in a pit, but naked? No.

  ‘Now,’ the man says. ‘Or the deal’s off.’

  And so the boy doesn’t have any choice. His heart convulsing in his throat, he kneels.

  ‘Turn your back,’ he tells the man.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said turn your back. You don’t get to look at her. Not… not like this.’

  The man gives him a look of pure hatred. But he does what he’s told and turns around.

  The boy puts the knife in his back pocket, folds the tarp off, and rolls her onto her back. Her hair spreads like a wing over her face. He unbuttons her jeans, lifts her hips, and pulls, whispering, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ so quietly he can hardly hear it over the tapping of the rain. He won’t look at her.

  A bird screams overhead.

  ‘Get the fuck on with it,’ the man says over his shoulder.

  Through barely open eyes, the boy finishes the job, but he doesn’t use the knife. He does it tenderly, without lingering. All of it: the shirt, jeans, socks. The rest. He piles the clothes beside him, covers her over again.

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Necklace,’ the man says, peering down.

  ‘I said don’t look—’

  ‘Necklace,’ the man says again, snarling now.

  The boy does as he’s told. And when it’s done, her hair catches around his fingers. As he unwinds it, careful not to uproot a single thread, he thinks of something else.

  He looks up. ‘What about her hair?’

  ‘What about it?’

  The boy blinks against the intensifying rain. ‘Fibres. There’ll be my hair in hers, probably.’ He doesn’t know if that’s how it works, but the idea is taking hold now. He has to convince him. ‘And yours. If they can find fibres on her clothes, I mean, why not in her hair? Not worth the risk.’

  The man flinches, nods. ‘Cut it then. Close as you can. Wrap it in the clothes, we’ll burn it all later.’

  The boy grunts, takes the knife back out, and flips it open. This time, he doesn’t waste a moment.

  ‘I have to,’ he whispers to her. ‘I’m sorry. I have to.’

  He doesn’t know it yet, but what he’s doing now, it’s going to be the cage around every dream he’ll have for the rest of his life. And each one of those dreams, from which he’ll wake choking for breath as if someone has forced an icy fist down through his mouth and taken hold of his heart, will end the same. An image of the girl he loved harder than anyone, the girl he would have given his life for, if she would have only let him do it, if it might have made her love him back:

  Her skin, white as bone, streaked with earth and rain. The last filaments of her hair falling from her scalp as she stands, naked, her arms loose against the sides of her living, perfect body. Her smile as she comes closer and closer until her face is against his.

  And her breath in his ear, and her voice, as soft as a blanket of snow.

  ‘Thank you. Thank you.’

  1

  Now

  Wren Reynolds pulls into the designated Probation Service bay, puts the Corsa out of its misery, and huffs at her hands. Almost March, but cold as midwinter. To her right, long wet stretches of overnight rain have darkened the concrete under the windows of B-Wing. Behind it lies a cloudless sky.

  On the passenger seat, she finds the printout of the room booking. CB009, Community Building. The newest addition to the complex, tucked behind the original red-brick Victorian edifice and clad, inexplicably, in dusky pink weatherboard. Cold, clean air floods the car as she opens the door. The day is brisk and bright. The kind of morning a person would hope for, if they were planning a fresh start.

  Her offender has six days left inside. Numerically speaking, at a few weeks off twenty-one years old, he’s still a young man. But considering the average stay in Bristol is around seven months, with the best part of three years under his belt he’ll be the grandfather of B-wing, part of the bolted-down furniture. One thing she knows: inmates do not come out the same as they go in, not if they serve as long as he has. Not even physically. He could be skinnier or fatter by now, or could have bulked himself up with weights and chin-ups the way they sometimes did. She recalls the photo in her file of the eighteen-year-old boy he’d been when he was sentenced: heavy forehead and the dark, blank glare. Impenetrable, near-black eyes a person could trip into and never hit the bottom.

  Wren takes a breath, then nods to herself. She’s ready. She gathers her things: handbag, phone, files. Props, really; anonymous shields. It was the first thing she’d learned in training, day one, lesson one: don’t give them anything of yourself. No pictures of your partner in your wallet, no mention of your kids, neighbourhood – nothing. Next to her, another student had asked a question. Are you saying they’re still criminals then, when they’ve finished their sentence? The tutor, a PO himself, had laughed drily, and the students had joined in as if they understood. And for the sake of fitting in Wren had smiled, she remembers now, as she flips down the visor and smears on a layer of muted pink lipstick that she doesn’t really like. But she hadn’t laughed.

  You had to try to believe in redemption. Forgiveness. You had to at least pretend.

  She fishes under the passenger seat for the flask of coffee Suzy had left on the kitchen table for her, then gets out. Her shoes clack on the tarmac as she heads towards the entrance, sending a report across the still-empty car park. Beyond the buildings, an amplified voice orders prisoners around in the yard, the sound of it cutting through the drone of the traffic arteries to the east. The place is only just coming to life, and Wren is deliberately early. He is still the
irs, but on the cusp of probation. This is the overlap of past and future, of incarceration and what comes next.

  The reception doors slide open and she lifts the lanyard round her neck to show the ID card hanging from it. The woman behind the acrylic screen leans closer, pushes her glasses up her nose and peers at it.

  ‘Community Atonement Programme,’ she reads slowly, then turns her suspicious gaze up to Wren’s face before softening in recognition. ‘Oh right. It’s you. What do you do now, then?’

  ‘Same as ever,’ Wren says, shrugging. ‘Whisk them away for a new life free from crime.’

  They deadpan that for a moment together before the woman breaks into a grin. ‘Really, though?’

  ‘It’s still probation,’ Wren says, looping the card off her neck and sliding it into the metal tray. ‘It’s the accelerated-release thing. CAP.’

  The receptionist’s face is pinched with the effort of dredging her memory.

  ‘It’s been on the news?’ Wren offers.

  ‘Don’t watch the news.’ Holding up an apologetic, one-minute finger, she disappears with the ID into a side room.

  Wren leans against the counter and waits. It is the first day of her new job: probation and rehabilitation professional – not technically a probation officer, a distinction which has been made much of in the press. The project is a five-city programme, involving a total of 104 offenders being released between six and twenty-four months early. Carefully screened offenders – according to the CAP press release – will make contact with those people most affected by his or her criminal actions, in order to understand and apologise for the repercussions of the crime. Scrape away the jargon and the gilding and what’s left is an emergency valve to release the pressure on the UK’s critically overpopulated prisons. Let them out early, knock on some doors and make them say sorry nicely, hope for the best. Known briefly in the tabloid press as the ‘Lout’s Lottery’.

  Known to people like Wren as ‘The Knocks’.

  As a bona-fide former PO, Wren is overqualified, and it has been a battle to get Suzy on side. There were other, better-paid jobs out there for Wren that would have appeased some of her partner’s mostly valid concerns about belt tightening. And sure, the timing could be better, given that Suzy is about to start maternity leave. But they’ll manage. She’s pretty sure they’ll manage.