by M. J. Ford
‘You need to let William go,’ said Jo, as earnestly yet gently as she could.
Yet if Sally heard her, it didn’t sink in. She looked at Dylan. ‘Leave her, darling. She’s all clean now.’
Jo couldn’t see what it was he was cleaning, but there was a definite pink tinge to the sponge. And now she understood that Will wasn’t looking at Dylan at all.
‘Will, don’t look over there,’ she said. ‘Look at me.’
His gaze flicked to her.
‘Good. Will, don’t worry about that man.’
She shifted her legs, and felt that the utility knife was still in the ankle strap. She wondered if she could reach it with her bound hands. Certainly not without being seen. She needed time. She needed to keep Sally talking.
‘Stephen took Dylan from the carnival that day,’ she said. ‘He was the man in the mask.’
‘We rescued Dylan,’ said Sally. ‘I mean, really, what sort of mother lets her child wander off alone like that?’ She chuckled. ‘It was Stephen’s idea to do it at the circus. He’d helped to set up the generators, so he knew the place well. When Dylan said he was going, it seemed like fate.’ She held out her arms to him. ‘Come here, sweetie. Come to Mummy.’
Dylan, on his knuckles, swung his legs beneath him, and made his way, monkey-like, across the floor. She heard Will cry out in the corner, pressing his head into his hands. But Dylan stopped beside Sally, and presented her with a pair of pale shoes that Jo recognised from somewhere.
‘Oh, silly!’ said Sally. ‘I’m too old for these!’
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head.
Close up, Jo saw that his body was covered in fine hairs. His hands were large, with long, elegant fingers. She understood now who’d been playing the piano when she visited a couple of days before. The sheer audacity of letting him come up to the house shocked her.
‘It was hard for him in the beginning,’ said Sally. ‘A new place, different rules. It took a while to find something he would eat.’
Jo felt sick as she remembered the tin. ‘You gave him cat food.’
‘Not at first. We gave him all the sweets he wanted, but the little tyke wouldn’t brush his teeth properly. After that we just had to find something he could chew, something nutritious.’
Jo grimaced.
‘Spare me the sanctimony,’ said Sally. ‘At least we loved him. I’d seen what his so-called father did to him. Taking his belt off for the smallest thing. And Stephen never lifted a hand to him unless …’ she looked sad for a moment ‘… unless he had to. We got him everything he wanted.’
Dylan was smiling. Jo looked around. How long had he been in here? Was there a bed somewhere?
‘I want to go home,’ said Will.
Dylan cocked his ears towards the sound and took a couple of leaping strides, passing Jo and heading towards her nephew.
‘No!’ she said. ‘Leave him alone!’
She threw herself after him, but only succeeded in sprawling.
‘No shouting,’ said Sally. ‘Please, Josie.’
Will had his hands over his head, not wanting even to see. Dylan stretched closer, and the ridges of his spine were jagged under his almost translucent skin. He sniffed at Will’s hair, his neck, then lower. A pool of urine darkened the floor. With a hand, Dylan smashed the wall above Will’s head and turned to Sally.
‘Again?’ said Sally, her mouth turning upside down.
Dylan’s mouth contorted, and the half-sounds emerged.
What happened to his fucking tongue? And as soon as she thought it, she knew. They’d had to keep him quiet. A seven-year-old would have cried and screamed, and if they’d shouted at him, he would only have screamed more.
‘I know Dylan’s probably a bit different to his other friends,’ said Sally. ‘But they’ll get used to each other. Children are more adaptable than you give them credit for.’ She chuckled. ‘Just look at Dylan.’
Jo had never felt so utterly powerless. She wanted to scream that if he hurt Will, if he scared him any more, she’d kill him, but she stopped herself. Instead, she wriggled like a worm, trying to get closer. Just to be with her nephew if anything happened.
‘I’m coming, captain,’ she said.
Dylan took hold of William’s arms, prising them from his face. William started to scream, and Dylan used the little boy’s hands to cover his ears.
‘Don’t, captain,’ said Jo. ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of. He doesn’t understand.’
But William didn’t stop. He couldn’t. She wondered if Dylan was actually screaming too. His mouth was gaping.
‘William, stop!’ shouted Jo. It was the first time she’d ever raised her voice to her nephew and it seemed to do the trick. He stopped, and looked at her through his tears. ‘That’s right, captain,’ she said. ‘Just look at Auntie Jo.’
Dylan’s gaze went back and forth between the two of them, then he spoke in his guttural jabber to Sally.
Sally laughed.
‘He says you’re pretty,’ said Sally. ‘Come back here, Dylan. You’re scaring William. Give him time.’
Dylan snapped something at her, then took a couple of loping hops to get closer to Jo. She didn’t care if he hurt her. As long as he was away from Will. He reached out and touched her hair. She flinched away, but he didn’t register it, and let his hand trail down her front, squeezing her left nipple hard.
‘Dylan!’ warned Sally.
He looked sulkily at her, and smiled at Jo. He leant forward, and she froze, lips clamped together but not able to stop the moan of terror. She felt the heat of his breath on her cheek, and then the sharp tips of his teeth on her ear. The pressure was only light.
‘Dylan – not now,’ said Sally. ‘Come over here at once.’
This time he obeyed, and as he moved out of her line of sight, Jo saw what he’d been doing on the floor. A woman’s body, naked but for a pair of jeans, lay sprawled on the ground. It was Rebekah Saunders. One half of her head was caved into a bloody pulp.
Oh fucking Christ.
She wriggled the last few feet until she reached Will’s side, and pressed close to him. His clothes were soaked with a panicked sweat.
‘It’s okay, captain. I’m right here and I’m not going anywhere.’
Sally was stroking Dylan’s hand in her lap.
‘He’s sensitive,’ she said. ‘Always has been. It’s what made us choose him.’ She looked at Jo conspiratorially. ‘He didn’t like Niall at all. That whole thing was … unfortunate. He wasn’t a nice boy, despite what Alan promised.’
‘You went to the RAF base, with Dylan?’
Sally looked cross. ‘He was so excited,’ she muttered. ‘He’d been talking about a friend for years. Getting really quite stubborn about the whole thing. You know children. I tried to tell him it wasn’t safe, going out, coming up to the house all the time – Stephen would never have allowed it – but he struggles with his temper a bit, does our Dylan.’
Jo realised that the bruise on Sally’s cheek might not have been a stumble after all.
‘I thought a friend might keep him happy, and Alan seemed a capable enough man. Looking back on it all though, I don’t think he really tried. I’m glad we did it on neutral ground, so to speak. I hate to think what Dylan might have done if Alan had brought Niall straight here. Some of the language that boy used.’ She smiled broadly, her eyes shining with delight. ‘Not like our William.’
‘Sally, listen to me,’ said Jo. ‘You have to let William go. The police will come here. They’ll find him. And when they do, they’ll take Dylan away from you too.’
Dylan sat upright, snatching his hand away. He gave a few grunts.
‘No, they won’t,’ said Sally. She shot Jo a scolding glance. ‘And really, you shouldn’t say things like that in front of him.’
A buzzer went off suddenly, and Dylan crossed the floor quickly. With both hands on the rope ladder, he hauled himself onto the mezzanine above with r
emarkable speed, before pulling the ladder up behind him. He had to crouch up there – it couldn’t have been more than five feet high. Perhaps that explained the hunch in his back. If Stephen had kept him up there, all this time …
‘I have to go for a moment,’ Sally said, standing up and brushing down her skirt. ‘Josie, this is serious now, so listen please. If you make a sound, if you try to escape, Dylan will kill you both. I know you’re a clever girl, so you understand, don’t you?’
Will was shaking beside her, and Jo said simply, ‘Yes, Sally.’
‘Jolly good. If you’ll excuse me.’
She hobbled speedily towards the door, letting herself out.
Jo pressed her face to Will’s. ‘It’s all right, captain. I’m not leaving you.’
A few seconds later the buzzer went off again. Jo realised it was the doorbell. It could well be the police. Maybe even the dog squad. But they wouldn’t be looking for her, not here. Carrick would assume she was on the run, not back round the corner from the scene of the crime. She tried not to let her eyes dwell on Saunders’ corpse. She couldn’t work out why the hell she was here. Not that it mattered for the moment.
From the mezzanine opposite, Dylan watched them, poised in a crouch. Can he see this far? she wondered. If she shouted for help now, what would he do?
Of course, it might not be the police at all. And if she screamed, and if Dylan attacked … If she’d been on her own, she might have risked it, but with Will beside her, it wasn’t an option.
I’ve got to get my knife. Got to cut this tape off.
She looked at the tools on the wall. If she was given the chance, she’d use anything she could.
She imagined Sally was almost at the front door by now. Depending on the visitor, she might be back in one minute, or twenty. This might be the first and only opportunity. She rocked up onto her heels beside Will, and with her hands hidden, strained her arms until she could hook the hem of her trousers. Dylan didn’t move. He looked like a living gargoyle, completely motionless.
They trained him, she thought. When the buzzer goes, he freezes.
She eased up the trouser leg, and her fingers found the knife. Still Dylan remained, and under his unflinching, unseeing gaze, she tugged it out. Will had seen though, and was shooting glances downward. There was nothing to be done there. She guessed, for all Dylan’s deficiencies in sight, he more than made up for it with his other senses. Her mind struggled to fathom how long they must have kept him in the darkness for him to end up looking like this.
She unfolded the blade awkwardly, her hands still bound. It was two and a half inches long. She flipped it in her hands, and laid the edge of the blade against the tape on her left wrist. With tiny, difficult movements, she began to saw. As she worked the blade back and forth, even the small noise sounded amplified in the empty barn.
She estimated the time passing. Forty seconds. Fifty. A minute. Sally could be back at any moment, and she couldn’t fail to miss what Jo was doing. Suddenly, she felt the tape give a little and heard a tearing sound. On the mezzanine, Dylan twitched, head cocked. But he remained where he was.
Jo continued cutting. Come on. Come on …
The door rattled and Sally came back in. ‘There we are. Nothing to worry about.’ She looked upwards. ‘Come on then, sweetpea.’
Dylan tossed the rope ladder down, and it unfurled to the ground.
Now or never.
Jo ripped her hands apart, shredding the last of the tape, then drove the knife into the tape at her ankles. Through it in a couple of seconds, she clambered up.
‘No!’ cried Sally.
Dylan lowered himself like Tarzan, hand over hand, and dropped the last ten feet to the ground.
Jo was running, heading for the mallet, as he came the other way, but she was just too slow. With his teeth bared, he slammed into her, and they both rolled across the barn floor, fetching up against the base of a cabinet. He was on top of her and brought down a fist towards her head. She did her best to block, then drove the knife into his ribs. Dylan arched his back, reaching for the wound, but she pulled it out and stabbed again. She felt hot blood gushing over her knuckles, spattering her face. She stabbed and stabbed, not really thinking where, but driving the blade as hard and deep as she could. Then he must have struck her arm, because it went completely numb and the knife skittered away.
‘What have you done?’ wailed Sally. ‘My poor boy!’
Dylan’s hands found her throat, and he lifted his hips, pressing down his whole weight. Jo squeezed her chin, but it was useless against such a force. It felt at once like her neck would simply give way, crushed under his bulk. She tried to buck her legs to toss him off. He grimaced, lips spooling blood and saliva. It poured between the stumps of his teeth, all over Jo’s front. Her head was heavy, dislocated from the wild stampede of panic in her chest, and blackness swept across her eyes. She reached up with her hand, searching for the wounds in his side, but it was all so wet that she couldn’t find the cuts. Jo tried to plead, because she knew she was going to die, but she couldn’t speak at all, and in the back of her mind, that seemed so terribly unfair. The world was shrinking, its sounds muffled and colours muted, until all she could see were Dylan’s eyes, the irises as luminescent as glowing pearls.
And then they gave an odd tremble, before rolling together sideways. The hands on her neck slipped loose and Dylan rocked for a moment. Sounds came back in a rush, and it was a scream she heard. Sally’s scream.
Then a dull thud. Dylan’s head lolled, and he toppled forwards, face smashing into the wall. Standing behind him was William, holding a mallet in both hands, hopping for balance with his ankles still bound.
Jo pushed Dylan’s weight off her, forced to move in what felt like slow motion. She reached out and took the mallet from her nephew’s hand.
Sally, arms outstretched, hobbled past them both, dropping to the ground beside Dylan’s body and saying, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’
He was lying flat on his stomach, completely still, but for the twitching of one hand. For a second or two, his elegant fingers tapped a syncopated rhythm that told of nothing more than his brain’s dying thoughts. And then they too were still.
Jo scooped Will to her, hoisting him into her arms, and walked as quickly as she could to the door without looking back. She carried him out into the light of an impossibly sunny day.
‘Are we going to see Mum?’ asked Will. His voice was quiet, stupefied, but he wasn’t crying any more.
‘That’s right, captain,’ she said. ‘I need you to be brave for a bit longer.’
At the top of the garden path, she entered Sally’s house again, stopping in the living room by the piano and picking up the phone while still holding William. She dialled three nines then calmly asked for the police.
As she was waiting to be put through, she watched the back door in case Sally decided to follow, though she suspected it would be a long time before the old woman emerged from the barn. She identified herself to the dispatcher, gave their address, and requested an ambulance, CID attendance plus uniformed back-up, as well as a forensics team.
Then, and only then, did her knees buckle. She sank to the carpet, with William clinging limpet-like to her chest.
Epilogue
Four days later, Jo picked Ferman up from his house. He was in a dark suit, clean-shaven.
‘You look smart,’ she said, as he lowered himself into the car.
He fastened his seat belt. ‘You look a mess.’
‘You old charmer,’ said Jo. It was true enough, though. Her neck and face were coloured by an assortment of bruises – purple where hands had almost strangled her life away, fading to green and yellow around the left side of her jaw.
They drove towards John Radcliffe hospital around the perimeter of the city. It seemed like another place entirely now the case was over. Families out enjoying themselves, students laughing without a care in the world. Life going on.
‘How’s your nephew doing?’ aske
d Ferman.
‘Under the circumstances, well,’ she said. ‘The whole family have gone camping for a few days in Devon – trying to put it to the back of their minds. He’ll need help though, going forward.’
‘Don’t we all?’ muttered Ferman. ‘So what about you?’
‘I’ll heal,’ she said. ‘Chewing hurts.’
‘I didn’t mean physically. You went through something bloody nasty, so I hear. Have they offered you any counselling?’
Jo nodded, eyes on the road. ‘I didn’t think you’d be a fan of all that touchy-feely stuff.’
Ferman stretched out his legs. ‘You should take them up on it,’ he said.
‘Didn’t do Alan Trent much good,’ said Jo, then regretted the flippancy.
But Ferman laughed. ‘Hopefully you’d get one who’s not a psychopath.’ They were almost at the hospital, and an ambulance streaked past in the other direction. ‘She’s been sectioned?’ said Ferman.
‘Under evaluation for thirty days,’ Jo answered. She’d periodically thought about visiting, but dismissed it. Cherry Tree Cottage was still surrounded by police tape. It felt too fresh. And from her brother’s house that morning, looking over the back of the garden towards the barn, she really couldn’t untangle how she felt about Sally Carruthers. Couldn’t separate the kindly piano teacher from the crazed woman who thought it was okay to steal another family’s child. Who’d used Alan Trent, a vulnerable, scared man, in the worst possible way, taking his fragile trust and smashing it with no thought for compassion or professional ethics. Who still, even now, was oblivious to the perverted upbringing she’d inflicted on poor Dylan Jones. Apparently, according to the team assessing her, she kept asking after Dylan, telling the staff to make sure they fed him properly. And this from the woman who’d given him cat food for three decades.
‘Chances of her doing time look slim,’ she said.
‘Some might say she’s suffered more than most,’ said Ferman. ‘She’s lost two kids now.’
He was speaking seriously, she realised. And there was a sort of truth to it.
But still. Tell Mr and Mrs Jones that …
