Dead Girls: An addictive and darkly funny crime thriller
‘Utterly compulsive’ Fiona CumminsFIVE MISSING. THE HUNT IS ON FOR NUMBER SIX.THE SERIAL KILLERWith five girls already missing and two dead police officers to add to the body count, the hunt is on. But how do you catch a man who doesn’t exist?THE VICTIMHeld captive for months, Erica Shaw has now vanished. In the race to find her, the police uncover evidence that leave them wondering, was she ever actually a victim?THE DETECTIVEThis isn’t DS Ali Green’s first murder case. But only recently recovered from her near-fatal injuries and battling some personal demons of her own, she’s out for justice.One thing’s for sure. Not everyone is going to make it out of this alive.
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‘If you loved Graeme Cameron’s Normal, you’d better hold on tight, because his exceptional follow-up hits it out of the park. Shot through with dry humour and darkness, and starring a female detective who will blow your mind, Dead Girls is an utterly compulsive read’
Fiona Cummins
‘Deeply creepy and very clever story’
Heat
‘An utterly compelling crime novel with an unforgettable heroine. I hope this is only the start of Ali’s story’
Elly Griffiths
‘Hypnotic and chilling – you won’t forget this in a hurry’
Lee Child
‘Blackly humorous …. Normal marks Cameron out as one to watch’
Daily Express
‘Original and gripping’
Clare Mackintosh
‘I didn’t like Normal. I loved it’
Michael Robotham
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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018
Copyright © Graeme Cameron 2018
Graeme Cameron asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9781474046688
For Helen Cadbury, the best and bravest
and
For Derek
Contents
‘Something’s wrong.’
Detective Sergeant Eli Diaz, formerly of Thetford CID, latterly seconded to the Major Investigation Team at Police Headquarters, and until today engaged in the search for a number of young women missing from across the county, took a moment to consider the redundancy of his statement.
He was standing at the foot of a metal-framed single bed, bolted into the ground through the black rubber floor. The bed was in a steel mesh cage some twenty feet across, the cage in a basement, the basement concealed beneath a garage, the garage nestled beside a stone cottage in a twenty-acre clearing in the forest.
It belonged to a man largely suspected, at least until that moment, of harbouring Erica Shaw, formerly a missing young woman, latterly upgraded to the status of fugitive, and last seen in front of the garage an hour ago, shooting one person dead and attempting to kill two of Eli’s fellow detectives before effecting her escape.
And now one of those detectives, Sergeant Ali Green, formerly of Norwich CID, latterly of the aforementioned Major Investigation Team, and currently somewhere up there alone with that man, was not answering her phone.
Diaz snatched up his own phone from the floor where he’d thrown it and made for the door of the cage, throwing an afterthought of a wave at a constable who was about to feel very alone and decidedly uneasy. ‘Keep trying to call her,’ he barked.
He took the stairs two at a time, ignoring the splintering pain in his skull from misjudging the height of the false cupboard as he burst through into the garage.
‘Green,’ he snapped, seizing on the first pair of eyes to meet his own; one of the DCs from Norwich Road, he thought. Winters or Winterbourne or something. ‘Have you seen Ali Green?’
A shrug. A confused shake of the head. A voice from somewhere behind him: ‘She’s with the owner. They were heading to the house.’
‘Fuck.’ Less a word than a grunt, choked by panic. Diaz bolted from the garage into chaos and driving rain, shouldering aside the crime scene techs struggling to erect a white tent over the body on the drive, forgetting his breathing, legs out of sync, staggering at full tilt toward the house, nothing like the machine he imagined himself on his morning run, as though the absence of lycra and trainers and a Fitbit reduced him to a gangly, stumbling foal.
He knew before he got there that he was out of control and wasn’t going to stop, that if the door didn’t break when he hit it, then this was going to hurt.
It was ajar. He wasn’t expecting that. It cannoned back on its hinges, barely slowing his progress, and his feet found a bundle of coats and an overturned hat stand and then he was sliding on his face across the hallway, breath punched out of his lungs, skin peeling from his nose and elbows and knees.
