“Tell us about Mary,” he said. “What sort of girl was she?”
June eyed him suspiciously over the teapot. “I suppose you’re expecting me to say she was the life and soul of the party, or she lit up the room when she walked in. That’s what most people say on telly when they’ve lost someone, isn’t it? Well, Mary was an average girl. She was special to me, of course, and to her dad, but she was an average fourteen-year-old. There was nothing special about her.”
She poured boiling water into the teapot and added, “What I’m saying is, there’s no reason anyone would kidnap her, or abduct her, or whatever you want to call it. She didn’t draw attention to herself. What her sister says about her knowing some older bloke is a load of rubbish. Mary wasn’t like that. She kept herself to herself.”
Tony felt a stab of disappointment. That was that line of questioning out of the window. If Mary had known the man in the Land Rover, she hadn’t told her mum about him.
“Do you have any of her things?” Dani asked. “Anything we could have a look at to get a better idea of who she was?”
June nodded. “I’ve got all of her things. Her room is still just how she left it. I never had the heart to clear it out.”
Tony posed his next question carefully. “Do you think we’d be able to have a look at it? We’d really like to get to know Mary better.”
The suspicious look didn’t leave June’s eyes. “But if she drowned in an accident, there’s no reason for police to be looking through her things.”
Tony hesitated before replying. She’d thrown out a logical statement that was true. If Mary had drowned, there was no reason for him and Dani to go and look at her room. By not refusing his request, but by putting out this statement, June had opened a small doorway. He knew that his reply couldn’t be anything along the lines of, “But we don’t believe she drowned,” because then that shield would be raised again, and the doorway of opportunity closed.
Considering this, he nodded in agreement with June and said, “That’s right. There’d be no need at all. If she drowned.” He didn’t put any particular emphasis on the word if. He wasn’t implying a question mark surrounding Mary’s death. He was simply replying to Mary’s statement with one of his own.
He was allowing her the opportunity to allow them into Mary’s room without conceding that the story she’d made herself believe for all these years might be false.
When June busied herself with the teapot and the mugs and didn’t reply, Tony—remembering what Colleen said about her mother not wanting to leave memories behind—added, “I’m sure you have many fond memories of your daughter, June. We never knew Mary, so we can’t share those memories. But we’d like to get a glimpse into her life.”
She pursed her lips, obviously thinking. Letting them into Mary’s room would be the closest she’d ever come to admitting there was a possibility, no matter how slight, that her daughter had been taken.
“All right, you can have a quick look,” she said. “But don’t be too long, or your tea will get cold.”
“Is her room upstairs?” Tony asked, moving towards the staircase in the hall before she could change her mind.
“Yes,” she said. “Last door on the left.”
Tony ascended the stairs, followed closely by Dani. When they got to the top, a dim hallway—lit only by a single net-curtained window—stretched along the length of the house. There were four closed doors up here. Tony went to the last door on the left, which waited in deep shadow, and opened it.
Mary’s bedroom was brighter than the hallway, thanks to a large window that overlooked the front yard, where Dani’s Land Rover was parked among the outbuildings. The room was furnished with a single bed, a small bookshelf, a pine bedside table and matching dressing table, and a large, dark wooden wardrobe that looked like it could be as old as the house itself.
The walls were adorned with the usual things one would expect to find in a teenager’s room in the late 90s: posters of bands that were popular at the time, including All Saints and Westlife; fashion drawings that might have been made by Mary herself; photos pinned on the wall by the dresser; and an acoustic guitar hanging from a wall mount.
A dressmaker’s mannequin stood in one corner of the room, wearing a green dress that was held together with a multitude of pins, and would never be finished.
“I thought Colleen said she and Mary were tomboys,” Dani said, inspecting the fashion drawings on the walls. “It looks like Mary was the opposite.”
“She was fourteen,” Tony offered. “Perhaps she’d been a tomboy for a while but was becoming interested in other things. Totally opposite things. Like fashion. Girls go through a lot of changes at that age.”
Dani raised an eyebrow at him. “I know. I have a daughter who went from splashing in puddles to going on dates in the blink of an eye. And I was that age myself once, about a hundred years ago.”
Tony laughed. “Yeah, I know how you feel.” He opened the wardrobe and looked inside. Jackets, plaid shirts that fit the tomboy image, and jeans dangled from hangers. Beneath the clothing, he found a shoebox, which he pulled out and placed on the bed.
“Got something?” Dani asked. She was picking books out of the bookshelf and flicking through the pages.
“Speed reading?” Tony asked.
“Books are great places to find things,” she said, placing a stack of paperbacks on the bed next to the shoebox. “A lot of people hide things in books.” Tony looked at the titles. They were romances and seemed to be about love in faraway places. Marriage in Marrakesh. The Paris Fling. Romance in Rio.
“Looks like she wanted to get away,” he told Dani. “Her leisure time was spent dreaming of distant lands.”
“That’s not unusual. I wouldn’t read too much into it.” She continued riffling through the pages.
He opened the shoebox. Inside, he found a number of loose photographs that had been taken with a Polaroid camera, and some jewellery. The yellowing photos were of locations that Tony guessed were nearby. Fields, woods, and a river which was probably the one Mary had apparently drowned in.
One picture showed a young woman in a summer dress, sitting by the river, a brooding look on her face as she regarded the water. In another image, she was sitting in a field, surrounded by grass which had faded from green to pale blue as the photo had aged.
Tony took his phone out of his pocket and checked the photo of Mary in the article he’d been reading on the way to Colleen’s house. Then he looked at the woman in the photos on the bed. She wasn’t either of the Harwood girls.
“Got something?” Dani asked, watching him as he stared at the Polaroids.
“I was just wondering who this is.” He held up the photo of the unknown woman sitting by the river. “It isn’t Mary or Colleen.”
“Perhaps June will know. Do you think it could be important?”
He pointed at the photos that were pinned to the wall by the dressing table. Some were of Mary, others of Colleen, and one of the Harwood family. Two photos showed a black and white border collie running around a field. “She displayed those, but not these. She placed these in a shoebox in her wardrobe.”
“You think she didn’t want anyone else to see them?”
“Maybe.”
“The photos on the wall aren’t Polaroids,” Dani said. “Mary could have taken these without anyone knowing. No need to have them developed.”
Tony placed the Polaroids in a neat row on the bed and took photos of them with his phone. He was fairly sure June wouldn’t let the originals leave the house.
“Anything in those books other than passionate romances in foreign locales?”
Dani shook her head. “Nothing.” She returned the paperbacks to the bookshelf.
Tony’s phone buzzed. It was Battle again. Tony answered the call, “Hi, boss.”
“Where are you?” Battle said. His rough manner hadn’t smoothed out at all since his last call.
“We’re at the house of June Harwood.”
“What are you doing there?”
“She’s Mary Harwood’s mother. Our chat with Colleen led us here.”
“Well, you can give her the good news, then.”
“Good news?”
“The body isn’t Mary Harwood’s. The dental records don’t match.”
“Oh.” Tony almost felt disappointed. At least if the body had been Mary’s, it would have given Colleen and June some closure. “Do we know who it is?”
“No, that’s going to take a bit longer to establish, I’m afraid.”
“Of course.” Eliminating Mary Harwood would have been simple, since they knew which records to check, but comparing the dental records of all missing persons from the area in the last two decades and hoping for a hit would be a much more difficult task.
“Anyway, that’s all. I’ll let you know when we have a positive ID.”
“Thanks,” Tony said, ending the call. He hadn’t exactly hung up on Battle, as the DCI had done to him, but it gave him an odd satisfaction exerting a little bit of control. As he put the phone into his pocket, he said to Dani, “It isn’t Mary. They still don’t know who the victim is, but it’s not Mary Harwood.”
“That’s a relief. I don’t fancy going back downstairs and telling June they’ve found Mary. She’s living in her own fantasy world where her daughter died from a tragic accident. I’m not sure how she’d handle reality if it hit her head-on like that.”
“She’d cope, eventually. Besides, just because it wasn’t Mary at the well doesn’t mean she wasn’t taken by the same guy. Her body might turn up tomorrow.”
“You think we’ll get another one tomorrow?”
He shrugged. “Why not? Two days, two bodies. Whoever’s leaving them where we can find them is trying to tell us something. If he’s got more bodies to give us, he’ll do so.”
“That’s all we need. With every body that turns up, the case will become more complex. More threads to investigate, more witnesses to interview.”
“Well, you said you wanted to get stuck in.” He held the photo of the girl by the river aloft. “Let’s see if June knows who this is.”
They went back downstairs. June was still in the kitchen, sitting at an old, scarred wooden table, drinking tea. When she saw Tony, she pointed at the other mug, which was still on the counter. “There’s plenty in the pot.” Turning her attention to Dani, she added, “For both of you, if you’ve changed your mind.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Dani said.
Tony filled the mug and placed the Polaroid in front of June. “Do you know who that is?”
She squinted at the photo, picking it up and holding it close to her eyes, before shaking her head. “No. Should I?”
“She wasn’t one of Mary’s friends?” Dani asked.
“I don’t recall seeing her before. My eyes aren’t too good nowadays, but there’s nothing wrong with my memory.”
“Do you mind if we take the photo with us?” Tony said.
“Did you get it from Mary’s room?”
He took a sip of tea. “Yes.”
“Then it stays here.”
He nodded. “I thought you’d say that. By the way, I have some news regarding the body that was discovered this morning.”
Her face paled and some internal emotion dragged her features into a look of horror.
“It isn’t Mary,” he said.
June’s face returned to normal, and there was only a slight quiver in her voice when she said, “I could have told you that. Saved you the journey.”
Ten minutes later, as they left the farmhouse, Dani said, “Why do you think he doesn’t ring me?”
“The question took Tony by surprise. He had no idea who she was talking about. “Why doesn’t who ring you?”
“Battle. He’s rung you twice today. He knows we’re together, so why doesn’t he ring me? Even once?”
“Don’t get paranoid about it. He assumes you’re driving.”
“I was driving.”
“He’s right to assume that, then.”
They got into the Land Rover. “Where to?” she asked.
“A spot of lunch would be nice. We passed a pub on the way here.”
She nodded. “All right.”
He took his phone out of his pocket and brought up the picture of the girl by the river.
“Who do you think she is?” Dani asked.
“I don’t know. But considering the fact that Mary kept these photos secret, I think we’d better find out.”
Chapter 14
Rob got out of bed at three in the afternoon, his usual time for rising when he was working. Sonia would be bringing the kids back from school soon, which gave him a short while to get ready for his shift before eating dinner with his family.
Before he got into the shower, though, he had to know if the police had found the girl he’d left at the ancient well.
Padding downstairs in his pyjama bottoms, he turned on the telly and found a 24-hour News channel. Sure enough, the story was about the remains of a girl discovered in the village of Temple Well, the second such discovery in two days. The footage they were showing onscreen had been taken from a helicopter and showed a glimpse of a white police tent in the woods near the village.
The report flicked back to the studio, where a neatly presented man in a police uniform was being interviewed about the find. According to the caption, his name was Chief Superintendent Ian Gallow.
Rob smiled. They’d brought out the big brass to investigate the little gift he’d given them.
He’d created quite the disturbance.
Better than that, he was undoing his father’s work, piece by piece. In time, he’d empty out the entire basement, leaving nothing down there but empty graves. And that was what his father’s work—if you could call it that—would amount to in the end. Nothing.
What James Gibson had taken a lifetime to build up, Rob would tear down.
Leaving the telly on, he went up to the bathroom and got into the shower. The hot water felt like tiny needles prodding at his skin. As he lathered the shower gel—something Sonia had bought that smelled of honeysuckle—onto his body, he wondered if he dared dig up another girl later.
It was too risky. After finding two bodies, the police would be on high alert.
Not only that, tonight wasn’t like the last two nights; he was at work. His night watchman job at the quarry demanded that he stay at his post. He couldn’t drive to his father’s house and dig up the basement when he was supposed to be making sure no one robbed the quarry offices or—much more likely—broke into the place and got killed in the process.
He realised that the question wasn’t did he dare dig up another body; it would be more honest to ask himself if he could resist digging up another one. There was something about his newfound hobby that thrilled him. Placing the girl by the well, unseen under the cover of night, had made his heart beat faster, pumping adrenaline through his body, bringing his senses to life. Compared to that, everyday life seemed dull and lifeless.
If he felt this way after just digging up two bodies, how must his dad have felt when he’d stolen the girls from the world and ended their lives?
He closed his eyes and leaned forward under the hot spray. His dad had offered to share that feeling with him, once. Rob had refused.
His thoughts drifted back to when he was a young boy, standing at the top of the cellar stairs, clutching his Action Man.
“Either come down or go to bed,” his dad said, sighing with frustration. “The choice is yours.”
Although he felt more than a little trepidation, Rob moved down the stairs, holding Sam tightly in his hand.
His dad smiled and nodded. “That’s right. Come down, son.”
Rob stepped onto the cellar’s dirt floor. The large room was mostly in darkness, the dim light from the single naked bulb casting shadows over the walls and ceiling.
“Have a look over there,” his dad said, indicating a dark corner at the far end o
f the room.
Overcome with curiosity, but also afraid of the atmosphere that seemed to be hang in the cellar like a cloud of dark energy, Rob moved towards the corner. He wanted to see what was there, but he also didn’t want to see. Some part of his mind screamed at him that if he saw what was in that corner, his world would change, and would never return to one he’d known up to this moment.
Just turn away, he told himself. Go back to bed and pull the covers up over your head.
“That’s right,” his dad said. “Just a little further.”
Rob jumped. He hadn’t realised his dad was right behind him, following him.
A noise came from the dark shadows in the corner. It was the same muffled noise he’d heard earlier; like someone trying to speak. The voice sounded frightened. Rob wondered if the person in the corner felt as frightened as he did.
Something lunged out of the darkness at him. He cried out and stumbled backwards, landing on his bottom on the dirt floor.
The girl who had come out of the darkness had her hands tied behind her back. Her ankles were also tied. A piece of grey tape covered her mouth. Her blue eyes were wide and wild, staring at him through tangles of dark hair, which had fallen over her face. She wore jeans, and a white T-shirt with a pink rose on the chest. She was a lot older than Rob.
She tried to speak through the tape. Rob was sure she was trying to say, “Help me!”
His dad lifted him to his feet and pressed the handle of the knife into Rob’s hand. Rob opened his palm and looked down at it, the blade shining in the dim light. The handle was made of rough wood, and had the initial JAG carved into it. Those were his father’s initials. James Andrew Gibson. Rob got the feeling that his dad, who was a capable carpenter, joiner, and woodturner, had made this knife himself, and that no one else had seen it. He’d certainly never seen it until this moment.
“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked.
His dad grinned and nodded towards the tied-up girl. “What do you think?”
Rob looked over at her. She was shrinking back into the corner, eyes wide with fear.
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