The Woman in the Wood

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘Two years for a mother to be deprived of her children and home is a long time too. Especially as one of those children is probably dead. How can you justify that, Grandmother?’

  ‘From what I understand, she doesn’t even know what year it is, let alone what month and day.’

  ‘But we only have his word for that. Give me the name of the home and I’ll go to visit her and speak to her doctor there. If it is as Father says, I’ll say no more on the subject.’

  ‘You’ve got very lippy,’ Grandmother replied, and there was a hint of admiration in her voice. ‘You didn’t used to say boo to a goose.’

  ‘I grew up when my brother disappeared, and I’ll tell you something else, Grandmother, I’m going to push the police harder too. If we had his body to bury we could grieve and then get on with our lives. Until that day it’s always going to be unfinished business.’

  When Maisy went back into the kitchen later she found Janice looking anxious.

  ‘You can stop looking like that,’ Maisy teased. ‘It was OK. We had a few things to sort out, but she came round. I think if people had stood up to her more often in the past, she wouldn’t be such a grumpy old toad now.’ She took a piece of paper from her pocket and brandished it. ‘Mother’s address,’ she said.

  When she told Janice about seeing her father with the glamorous woman, Janice nodded, as if not entirely surprised. ‘It never actually occurred to me that he might have someone else,’ she said. ‘I always thought he was a bit too upright to do that. But strangely he’s called in here at least every three weeks for some months now, never staying the night. He told his mother he was on business down here but that didn’t quite ring true. If he had business in Southampton he would surely have taken the train, but he was always in his car. So maybe she’s down this way, maybe not far from here.’

  ‘I don’t really think it’s my place to take him to task for having someone on the side,’ Maisy said thoughtfully. ‘But it is my place to find out how my mother is. So that’s what I’ll do.’

  That night Maisy found she was unable to sleep. It felt strange to be back in her old bedroom – it was too quiet, and too dark. She’d grown used to traffic noise, and the glow of street lights. The darkness here was so thick it felt like a heavy curtain and the only sound was the occasional hoot of an owl. She also had so much to think about: going to see her mother, wondering what her father was up to, and then when she would see Linda, Mr Dove and Grace.

  She wasn’t sure why she felt she needed to see Grace, but some gut instinct told her she must. It would be fun to see Linda. They had written to one another three or four times, but that wasn’t the same as seeing a friend face-to-face.

  Might she run into Alan? She hoped so, and planned to put her hair up in a beehive, and wear her new white pencil skirt and navy and white candy-striped blazer that Martin said made her look like a beauty queen. She really hoped Alan would look at her and wish he’d been brave enough to defy his parents. Not that she cared about him any more, but it would be good for her ego.

  Her first call of the morning was to see Mr Dove, and his face broke into the broadest of smiles when he opened his front door to her. ‘Well, you look like you’ve stepped out of Vogue. Come on in, it’s so very good to see you.’ He wheeled his chair back into his living room, still smiling, and offered her a cup of tea.

  Maisy made the tea for them both in his kitchen and then they sat down to talk. He was delighted her new life had turned out to be a happy one, and was impressed she’d been attending night school to learn secretarial skills.

  Their conversation eventually turned back to Duncan after Dove mentioned the other bodies that had been found.

  ‘I hope you won’t find this offensive,’ he said, pulling out a large sketchbook from his desk. ‘But I’ve been doing a little sleuthing myself.’

  He’d made a map of the south coast, and at each of the places where a body had been found he’d put a small red sticker with their name. The home of each boy was marked with a blue sticker, and finally there was a green sticker for the area where each of them was last seen.

  ‘Does anything jump out at you about the placing of the stickers?’ he asked.

  Maisy studied them for a few moments. ‘Well, they all seem to have about the same distance between where they lived, where they were last seen and where their bodies were found,’ she said. ‘Or is that just the way you drew the map?’

  ‘No, I traced the map, so it’s the correct scale. In each case the body was found around twenty miles from where the boy was last spotted; in four of the cases that was close to their school. Those four all disappeared in term time. With the other three, the distance was a little greater and they disappeared in the school holidays.’

  ‘As Duncan did,’ Maisy said.

  Dove nodded.

  ‘So the killer prefers to pick the boys up from school?’ Maisy winced.

  ‘It looks very likely that is his hunting ground. I think he follows them from school, learns a bit about them and maybe engages them in conversation somehow. No one witnessed any of the boys in distress or being bundled into a vehicle, so perhaps he lures them away with something they’re interested in. I think the person the police should be looking for would be attractive. People, especially young people, usually respond better to strangers if they’re attractive. He’d probably be physically fit and well dressed.’

  ‘How did you get this detail?’ Maisy asked. ‘I don’t recall so much in the newspapers.’

  ‘Well, the last part is purely my theory, but I have a pal in the police where I got the rest.’ Dove smiled. ‘We were called up for the army on the same day and that’s why we became friends. We were put in the same regiment, and he helped save me when I was wounded. He was the main reason I came this way to live when my marriage ended, because he lived here. He talks to me about the case because of Duncan having been my pupil.’

  ‘I thought the police had stopped investigating?’ Maisy said.

  Dove shook his head. ‘Oh no, they might like that to be put about to lure the killer into complacency, but nothing could be further from the truth. They’re still hunting for further clues and possible witnesses. Harry, my friend, is a sergeant. He only joined the investigation team after you went off to Brighton, Maisy, which is why you didn’t meet him. Because of me, he’s like a dog with a bone on this.’

  Maisy looked thoughtfully at the map and the stickers. ‘Duncan is the odd one out. He’s not from a seaside town like the others. His body hasn’t been found. We’ve got Andrew Coates in Littlehampton, John Seeward in Portsmouth, Eric Jones in Southampton, Michael Redwood in Eastbourne, James Buckle in Newhaven and Ian Standing in Brighton. The other missing boy, Peter Reilly, was from Seaford. So why change to the New Forest for Duncan? But if he did kill my brother, and he acted in the same way as the other murders, Duncan’s body would be within a twenty-mile radius of Nightingales. I assume the police covered that?’

  ‘Yes, they did, Maisy. In fact, they covered much further than that.’

  ‘Then there’s his missing bike. As the police didn’t find it, maybe the man put it in the vehicle with Duncan.’

  ‘Yes, that makes sense,’ Dove said. ‘But another oddity is that all these boys whose bodies have been found were held somewhere for at least a month before being killed, some much longer, and then buried on waste ground. That was proved in the autopsies. Harry thinks, and I tend to agree with him, that the killer captures these boys for a purpose, and if they don’t shape up for whatever it is he wants of them, he kills them.’

  ‘What could he want them for? They’re only fourteen or fifteen.’

  When Dove didn’t answer her question, she immediately guessed it was something too horrible to discuss with a girl of her age.

  ‘Something …’ She couldn’t say the word ‘sexual’, and she blushed with embarrassment.

  ‘Yes, that’s what we both think,’ Dove agreed, clearly understanding what she meant. ‘But let’s no
t dwell on that, Maisy.’

  ‘If it’s something like that, why are the police harassing Grace Deville?’

  ‘I think they felt compelled to take her in for questioning because people were so convinced she was involved. But it was, is, ridiculous for anyone to suspect her. She has no motive, she liked Duncan and he liked her. She rarely leaves her home in the forest, and even if she had gone to each of the places the boys were taken, they wouldn’t have stopped to talk to her. Besides, there would’ve been witnesses who had noticed her – by all accounts, she’s hardly an ordinary-looking woman. On top of that, the police checked the mileage on her van and she does an average of less than ten miles a week in it.’

  ‘I’m going to see her later,’ Maisy said, giving her old tutor a defiant look that dared him to tell her that was unwise. ‘I need to ask her if Duncan talked about anyone else to her, someone I don’t know, maybe someone he met through the boys in the village. Also, last time I saw her she said something about the boys being taken for a purpose, sort of like you’ve just said. She knew all their names too; she’d been following the news reports, in much the same detail as you.’

  ‘Really? She clearly did care about your brother, then?’

  ‘Yes, very much so. I don’t believe that Duncan would ordinarily accept a lift from a stranger, but if he’d had a flat tyre or some sort of accident and this person stopped to help him, then he might have agreed to be driven home.’

  ‘Well now, clever Maisy, you might have come up with how this killer got Duncan. He could even have caused the accident.’

  ‘The man might have a local connection. He could have recognized Duncan because he’d seen him around the village,’ Maisy said. ‘I mean, if he said to Duncan, “I know your grandmother,” Duncan would be inclined to think that made the person safe. Anyway, I wanted to talk this idea over with Grace, and to see if she’s come up with anything new.’

  ‘I won’t try and deter you from going to see her, but please don’t linger in the forest, Maisy. And please let me know if there are any further developments, won’t you?’

  Maisy smiled at him and stood up. ‘I’ll be back to see you again before I go back to Brighton, Mr Dove. You are one of the few people around here I care about.’

  11

  Maisy left Mr Dove’s cottage and rode her bike out into the forest. After the hustle and bustle of Brighton it was so good to be on virtually empty roads, to see nothing more than the odd couple out on a dog walk.

  There was something special about April, the vivid greenness of new growth on trees and bushes, wood anemones and celandines carpeting the ground, and the strappy leaves of the bluebells to come in May. The birds were in full chorus, and as she pedalled slowly, enjoying the sounds and sights, she observed nest building, and indeed birds flitting about as if they already had fledgling chicks that needed feeding.

  The path through to Grace’s shack was more clearly defined now – perhaps due to the police tramping out to see her – so much so that Maisy was able to wheel her bike almost the whole way. As she came out of the bushes into Grace’s clearing, she saw her bent over her vegetable plot, weeding. Toby barked frantically.

  Maisy waved when Grace looked up. ‘OK to come and say hullo?’ she called out.

  Grace told Toby she was a friend and beckoned her over. ‘I didn’t think I’d see you again,’ she said. ‘I heard a whisper that your grandmother wasn’t too happy about you leaving your lessons and going to work in Brighton.’

  ‘She seems to have got over that now,’ Maisy said as she came closer, wondering who might have given Grace this information. ‘But she hasn’t written to me once since I left.’

  ‘And how is the job?’ Grace asked, rubbing her back as if it ached.

  Maisy grinned. ‘Great. I’m very happy there, but there are a couple of things I wanted to talk over with you. I know the police have been hounding you, and I’m so sorry about that. I’ll understand if you want me to clear off.’

  ‘The police weren’t too bad,’ Grace said. ‘I think they were just going through the motions because people in the village think I’m dangerous. Come and sit down with me for a while.’

  They sat on a bench, and Maisy told Grace the gist of what Mr Dove had said about the other murdered boys and why he thought Duncan and the other boy Peter Reilly still hadn’t been found dead. She added the idea about Duncan having an accident on his bike.

  ‘I wanted you to try and think back about whether he mentioned anyone, like a casual meeting with someone. If he did, it might be something the police could follow up. Mr Dove seems to think his police sergeant friend is really getting his teeth into the case.’

  ‘I don’t recall Duncan mentioning anyone other than some of the village boys that he made friends with. He was very quick to say he hadn’t told them he sometimes visited me so they wouldn’t come out here. But they’re just boys, it couldn’t be one of them. However, I don’t think it would hurt for the police to look a little closer at their fathers or other older male relatives, any of whom could’ve met Duncan.’

  She paused for a moment as if thinking something through. ‘I agree with your Mr Dove about why all the boys have been found except for Duncan and the other boy Peter. Perverted, evil men who prey on young people, be that girls or boys, will quickly lose interest in their victims if they turn out to be a disappointment.’

  ‘In what way do you mean?’ Maisy asked.

  ‘Too compliant, not compliant enough. Someone who fights them, or doesn’t fight at all. It’s all about extremes.’

  ‘You sound as if you know something about this kind of thing,’ Maisy said cautiously.

  ‘What makes you think that? It’s just common sense,’ Grace retorted brusquely.

  ‘I’m sorry, I suppose it is,’ Maisy said. But she didn’t think it was; to her what Grace had said sounded like the voice of experience.

  They talked a little more, mostly about Maisy’s life in Brighton. She also told Grace that she now had the address of the place her mother was in. ‘It’s in Tenterden, Kent, so I thought I’d go there when I leave here.’

  ‘Make sure you get to speak to the psychiatrist she’s under,’ Grace said. ‘Might be a good idea to ring first and pin him down for an appointment. Ask him for full details of your mother’s condition, the medication she is given, and what likelihood there is of her going back to a normal life. Make notes of the medication and any technical words he uses. That way you can speak to another psychiatrist and get a second opinion.’

  ‘Is it possible she could’ve been sent there by my father just to get her out of the way, so he could have another woman, for instance?’ Maisy asked. She wasn’t going to admit she’d seen her father with someone.

  ‘Years ago such incarcerations were quite common, for all kinds of often ridiculous reasons,’ Grace said. ‘As I know to my cost. But I would imagine they are very rare now. Divorce doesn’t have the same stigma it used to have, so if this was just about your father wanting to be free, he could achieve that easily without getting your mother committed. You must of course consider that she might really not be capable of looking after herself and is possibly a danger to others. But you will find that out when you visit.’

  ‘Why can’t adults explain properly to their children about problems such as these?’ Maisy asked. ‘Here I am asking Mr Dove and you about it. My father could have stopped all that worry and mistrust by just explaining.’

  Grace half smiled. ‘Your father is the same generation as me. We were brought up in the dark about family problems, and warned it was bad form to ask leading questions. I had a cousin who was a bigamist; it didn’t come out until he died, when two wives came forward to take the responsibility of burying him. He had four children with the first wife and two with the second. It turned out the wives and his brothers had always sensed something odd was going on, but no one wanted to be the one to ask questions.’

  ‘How on earth did he get away with it?’

  G
race shrugged. ‘He was a salesman for a pharmaceutical company and he had a wide area to cover; both wives thought he was in lodgings on the nights he wasn’t with them. But now I must get back to my weeding and it’s time you went back home before it starts to get dark. It was good to see you again.’

  Maisy was disappointed to be dismissed just when she felt they’d struck up a friendship, but then Grace wasn’t used to company. ‘Is there any way of contacting you, like an address you pick mail up from? Only I don’t know when I’ll be back here again and I’d like to tell you what happened about Mother.’

  ‘I have a post office number and pick up any mail once a week,’ Grace said. ‘Not that I get much, but I’ll write it down for you. You give me yours too, just in case something comes to me.’

  The following morning Maisy went into Lyndhurst on the bus to see Linda. They greeted each other with whoops of delight and barely drew breath for a couple of hours, there was so much to say. Linda thought her friend’s new look – the beehive, the pencil skirt and blazer – was great. But she had to go out with her mother to visit an aunt in hospital, so they arranged that Maisy would come back one day after Easter and stay the night.

  ‘That way we can see if we can arrange to run into Alan and Steven,’ Linda said. She said she had gone out with Steven a couple more times last year, but once she’d gone back to school she’d thought there was no point in carrying on writing to him as he was a bit of a Mummy’s boy. ‘That doesn’t mean I’m not into flirting with him again now, though,’ she added.

  Maisy was on her way to catch the bus back to Nightingales when she saw a bus going the other way to Southampton, and on the spur of the moment thought she’d visit Donald Grainger in his office, to ask his advice on going to see her mother.

  She had been shocked and embarrassed by the incident when he’d made a pass at her, but looking back, now that she was a bit more experienced with men, it didn’t seem quite so bad and she even wondered if she might have inadvertently encouraged it. She had after all quite fancied him – anyone would – and maybe he’d picked up on that.