terry The Doll © Interact Publishing

Chapter 1: Shona – Tuesday night

Octopuses are hard to love. They kill almost anything you put with them in a tank, including other octopuses. They are notorious escape artists, they're smart and I don't make them happy. I think of them as male, perhaps because they remind me of my experiences of life with Boy. Except that I lived with Boy for 14 years – octopuses aren't that long-lived – and he managed not to kill me in all that time.

We successfully procreated and then he escaped. See, I told you; smart!

I doubt my former partner's superficial similarities to an octopus would have occurred to me if I didn't work with a lot of cephalopods; octopuses, cuttlefish and squid make up 30% of the population of our laboratory aquarium. Our lab's newest resident was already housed when I started my week on nights. He was an algae octopus (Abdopus aculeatus). He came with a reputation for escaping – earning the nickname 'Gone Puss' in his previous aquarium – and for being hard to love. As far as I knew our lab hadn't officially named him, so 'Gone Puss' it was.

Gone Puss wanted to set out the terms of our relationship early on. I really had tried to make him happy, even feeding him first on my rounds. That was some two hours ago. There were 28 live experiments I had to note and report on and over 50 of the 130 tanks required me to feed their occupants at night, including most of the cephalopods.

I eyed Gone Puss as I returned to my work-station. Phew, he was still in the tank.

Normally I didn't mind the night-shift – only four nights a month – that gave me time alone; time to think in the low blue light and watery soundscape of the six long rooms. The routine was simple and cathartic and many of the specimens fascinating to watch. I felt fortunate to do a job I enjoyed, one that made use of my biology degree and that challenged me intellectually. Four nights a month were worth that but they meant I had to be ultra-organised as a single mum of 11-year-old Harry. I accepted I'd not see so much of him for one in four Tuesdays to Fridays but made it up to him at the weekend.

Normally I didn't mind the nights... this Tuesday was different. What I needed was soothing undemanding TV drama to lose myself in, someone to blether inanely to, and comfort foods stacked up beside me. What I didn't want was to be left alone with my own thoughts. They had a disturbing habit of stomping around my head, as though they owned the place.

Gone Puss was smart enough to realise my life signs were edging to the wussy side of wimpy: octopuses, inanimate objects and children have an unerring sixth sense about these things. Even from within his tank, he had correctly identified me as a loser he could prey upon.

As I approached his 50-gallon tank, every centimetre of Gone Puss was in motion, every limb crept, spread, twisted and sawed, his sac of a body heaved against the glass as if trying to prise a way through. Everything moved apart from his coin-slot eye. I had to walk past his tank to my work-station and as I drew level with it, the octopus spat out the pellet of thawed shrimp from the same feeder tube I had pushed it into two hours earlier.

Many of the cephalopods took time to adjust to the dead shrimp we substitute for the live food they would have cornered in their reefs, but this octopus was already an aquarium inmate and had no excuses. No, he was determined to register his animosity to me personally. The pungent pellet was a flaccid reminder that his ancestors had developed in the world's oceans 230 million years before my mammalian ones had appeared.

I couldn't even retaliate as octopuses are so intelligent they are the only invertebrates given special protection under the UK law governing the licensing of animal experiments.

'Missed,' I snarled back, 'you aggravacious suckerous beastie!' I let the pellet lie and walked on.

Normally I didn't mind the nights... normally I didn't let rejected morsels of un-breaded scampi unhinge me, but this particular Tuesday night the cold wet seafood lump provided further chilling evidence that I was fair game for anyone or anything to victimise. My laptop keyboard beat out a word but it was nothing to do with the experiment notes I was employed to make.

' R!?' I typed with stabbing fingers and stared at the word on the screen. At least I had spelt it correctly.

I was still staring an hour later, my head a fervent stramash of relived humiliation and futile anger, when a short burst of 'Flower of Scotland' burbled from my phone.

It was a text from someone not to be found in my contacts list. I clicked carelessly on it: 'It's your bruise, Sho. What some people will do to get ahead!' read the text; words followed by a pared down 'tinyurl' link. Another automatic click from me and a video clip opened up. The headline read, 'Murder victim: police appeal for help' and it was dated from three months ago. Click: I spun the phone and hunted around to increase the volume. A circle was zeroing down onto a map of fields, waterways and scrubland. A presenter's voice was saying, 'police are appealing for help in identifying the headless woman found dead in a drainage ditch in fenland close to Whittlesey on Tuesday. They believe the murdered woman was in her mid-30s and light-brown haired. Her hands were also cut off and her only identifying mark is this distinctive bruise on her upper left arm...' A graphic flashed up on screen. I dropped the phone on the desk as my hand blundered unerringly to my left bicep where I knew I had an identical bruise.