Dark Peak

by Adam J. Wright

  “Mr. Walker?” The voice sounded distant, faint. “Are you still there?”

  “I’m still here,” Mitch said.

  “You said you had something for me?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Well, if you could come into the station so we can take those prints—“

  Mitch ended the call. He leaned closer to the journal to inspect the page he’d landed on. A sketched portrait of Sarah filled half of the page. She looked exactly as she had the night she’d gone missing, with a plait down the left side of her hair, tied with two blue beads with white stars.

  Below the sketch were two lines of writing that made Mitch’s blood run cold.

  A forget-me-not that never blooms

  Might hide and then grow old

  But it wasn’t the picture or the words beneath it that had caught Mitch’s attention. There was something else, something stuck to the page. He reached forward and ran his finger over it.

  A strip of clear tape had been laid across the bottom of the page. And beneath the tape lay a lock of chestnut hair.

  10

  Murder Board

  Elly threw the covers aside and got out of bed at nine, welcomed by the view of the moors and distant hills through the window. The day was grey but it wasn’t raining, so after going downstairs and making a cup of tea, she slipped her feet into her boots and went out into the back garden. The smell of wet grass and lavender laced the morning air. Elly felt a slight chill but that was only because she was still wearing her cotton pyjamas. Besides, the chill made her feel alive. It was like a splash of cold water in the face after a long, heavy night. It felt invigorating.

  As she stood on the grass and sipped her steaming tea, she shivered slightly. She knew it wasn’t because of the cool breeze. A sense of anticipation buzzed through her like electricity, making her tremble with its power.

  She’d come here on a “fool’s errand” as her mother called it, and if she was honest with herself had only taken the job to get away from the Paul situation. But now that she was in the place where the girls had been plucked from their lives like apples from a tree, she was sure there was some mystery here. And she was determined to reveal its secrets, to shine a light into the dark corners and chase away the shadows that surrounded the fates of Josie Wagner, Sarah Walker, and Lindsey Grofield.

  Finishing her tea, Elly went back into the cottage and wiped her damp feet on the mat inside the back door. She put the cup in the sink and went upstairs to get dressed, choosing jeans, an old T-shirt, and a dark green woollen jumper from her case.

  She went out to the Mini to get her whiteboard and pens from the back seat. When she got back inside, the propped the whiteboard up on one of the dining room chairs and arranged the magnets down the left-hand side. In the middle of the board, she drew a large blue question mark. The symbol represented the unknown subject of her investigation, or the unsub.

  Using the magnets, Elly stuck the three newspaper articles onto the board in chronological order. The murder of Josie Wagner in 1977 in the top left-hand corner, the disappearance of Sarah Walker in 1987 in the top centre, and the disappearance of Lindsey Grofield on New Year’s Eve 1999 in the top right.

  Beneath the articles on Josie and Sarah, she wrote “Gordon Farley”. Farley was a detective whose name was mentioned in both articles. In 1977, Josie Wagner’s case had been led by a detective named John Hanscombe, with Farley acting as second-in-command. In 1987, Farley was the lead investigator dealing with Sarah Walker’s disappearance.

  Farley’s name didn’t appear in the Lindsey Grofield article. The detective in charge of that case was DCI Stewart Battle, whose name also appeared in the article about the Sarah Walker case. On the whiteboard, Elly wrote “Stewart Battle”.

  At the bottom of the board, she wrote “Michael Walker” and next to that, she added “Edge House”.

  Standing back and inspecting the board, she realised she had very little to go on. The names and articles were lone islands floating in a sea of white with no lines connecting anything to anything else. Elly drew a blue line connecting both instances of Gordon Farley’s name so there was at least one connection on the board and the whole thing didn’t look so nebulous.

  The most promising place for Elly to start was to interview Farley, if he was still living in the area, to find out what he knew about the Wagner and Walker cases. Then she should track down Stewart Battle and interview him about Sarah Walker and Lindsey Grofield. That would give her the official police view regarding the murder and the disappearances.

  She needed to investigate the areas in each case where the police might have overlooked something. One of those areas was the involvement of Michael Walker. If the police had ignored leads because of Walker’s social status or because he had friends in high places, that was where Elly could find something new, something Farley and Battle had missed because they were tied down with red tape.

  Edge House was as good a place as any to begin her investigation into Walker. Most serial killers kept trophies of their kills, so it stood to reason that there could be something hidden at the house. She shivered when she remembered that there were also two bodies missing.

  Now that Michael Walker was gone, it was possible that the Edge House was empty, waiting to give up its secrets to anyone who had the guts to break in and snoop around.

  She went to the table, grabbed her camera and map, and left the cottage. She got into the Mini and started the engine. For a moment, she paused, hands on the steering wheel, the engine idling. Was she really considering breaking into Edge House? If she got caught, the consequences would be serious. Maybe she should go back into the cottage and spend the day on her computer finding out how to contact Gordon Farley and Stewart Battle.

  She looked out of the windscreen at the distant mist-shrouded peaks as if they could give her an answer to her dilemma and tell her which path to take. Spend the day indoors or risk everything and become a burglar?

  She needed to know what, if anything, was hidden at that house. It might be the key to finding out what happened to the girls. They were relying on her.

  She pulled out onto the road and set off in the direction of Edge House.

  11

  Among the Pictures

  Elly arrived at Edge House an hour later. The entrance was almost hidden from the road among the trees. She’d expected a wide driveway behind a tall iron gate but the approach to the house was a narrow track leading into the woods behind low stone pillars topped with statues of sleeping lions.

  She steered the Mini between the stone pillars and proceeded slowly along the track. The house wasn’t visible ahead because the track bent left. Damn it. At least if she could see the house, she’d know if there were vehicles parked outside. This way, she might drive around the bend ahead and find herself in the middle of a garden party or something. She could hardly say she was lost and had turned off the road by mistake; the lion pillars clearly stated where this track led and there’d been a Private Road sign back there too.

  Oh well, she’d think of something if she had to. Better not to dwell on it now or she’d find herself turning around and going back to Windrider Cottage without even seeing the place where Michael Walker lived. If she was going to do this properly, she had to get a feel for the man. She relied on intuition a lot in her work and the only way to nurture that intuition was to get close to the subject of her investigation.

  The same way she’d gotten close to Leonard Sims, the Eastbourne Ripper.

  At least Michael Walker was dead. He wasn’t going to fill her head with graphic tales of how he’d killed and mutilated his victims. The things Leonard Sims had told her gave her nightmares most nights.

  She turned left, following the track, only to find it turned right almost immediately and revealed Edge House. The sharp S bend seemed to have been put in the track to hide the house from the road, something a straight approach wouldn’t have done.

  There were no vehicles parked outside
the house, no lights on inside. The place seemed dead.

  Unwilling to leave the Mini in front of the house where it could be easily spotted, Elly drove around the side of the house and to the rear where the gravel terminated at a high brick wall. She killed the engine and got out.

  She was considering scaling the wall and seeing what was beyond it when she noticed the back door was open. A small indentation cratered the wood and the latch was broken. Dark powder, which Elly recognised as fingerprint powder, had been applied along the frame and in various areas of the door.

  It looked like someone had beaten her to the house. Was it someone with the same motive as her, or a common thief? She went to the door and pushed it gingerly. It swung open slowly, opening onto a light, airy kitchen.

  Elly paused at the threshold, trying to calm her breathing. Her heart pounded and she felt heat prickling up her neck. If she went into the house and was discovered, no amount of smooth-talking was going to get her out of trouble.

  She went back to the car, opened the passenger door, and reached into the glove compartment. She kept a pair of black wool gloves in there. Donning them, she grabbed the camera and slung it around her neck. Even if she didn’t find anything incriminating in the house, some pictures of the interior would be useful, especially if all of this was going to end up in a book someday.

  She returned to the open door and stepped inside. She took two steps into the kitchen and froze when she heard a sound. A tapping sound reached her ears. It took her a couple of seconds to realise it was rain on the window. Now she saw that the brick wall she’d parked near surrounded an overgrown garden.

  A walled garden miles away from the closest neighbour was a private-enough place to do some digging at any hour of the day or night and bury bodies. Was this overgrown, weed-infested garden the final resting place of Sarah Walker and Lindsey Grofield? Elly took a picture of it through the window but the spatter of rain on the glass obscured the garden, blurring it so the camera lens couldn’t pick out any detail.

  Elly walked across the kitchen as silently as she could, telling herself that only she could hear her rapid breath and the heartbeat that seemed to pound in her ears. She came to an open door that led to a small passageway and, beyond that, the front door and the house’s foyer. Treading carefully, she made her way to the foyer and paused there, listening to the house around her. She could hear the rain lightly tapping on the windows and the roof but apart from that, Edge House was quiet.

  She wasn’t sure where to begin her search so she went through the nearest door and found herself in a living room with a sofa and an easy chair in front of a plain wooden coffee table, fireplace, and flatscreen TV. There were a couple of bookcases standing against the walls but otherwise the room was empty.

  She’d expected the interior of such a grand house to be stuffed with pieces of art, antique furniture, and huge portraits. But apart from a few paintings of hunting scenes in the foyer, there seemed to be nothing grandiose about Edge House other than its outward appearance. The interior was purely functional. She took a quick photo but there was nothing interesting about the room.

  She went back to the foyer and through the door set in the opposite wall. The room beyond was brightly lit by daylight streaming in through a large window that overlooked the lawn. Except for an ornate stone fireplace decorated with carvings of vines and cherubs, the room was empty. There wasn’t even a chair where someone might sit and enjoy the sunlight on a nice day. Elly took a photo but wasn’t sure who would be interested in looking at a picture of an empty room.

  Despite the brightness, the emptiness of the room was depressing.

  Elly returned to the foyer and stood for a moment in silence. There was a lonely atmosphere here that was almost tangible. It was as if the heart of Edge House had withered and died.

  Or maybe it had been ripped out when Sarah vanished and Michael Walker’s wife and son left him. Walker had been living on his own here for the past thirty years, rattling around in this Gothic box with nothing to keep him company other than his own thoughts. He’d never divorced his wife and remarried, never had any other children. No wonder the place was devoid of plush furnishings.

  If he was an innocent man, Elly felt sorry for him. The disappearance of his daughter had torn his family apart and he’d lived out his years alone, within a vast house that was filled with nothing.

  She heard a noise outside, like tyres crunching on gravel. She went quickly back into the empty room and peeked through the large window. When she saw a police car approaching the house, she panicked. Had someone seen her enter the house and called the police? Or were there silent alarms that had been triggered the moment she’d stepped inside?

  She couldn’t get to the Mini and drive away without being seen, couldn’t flee on foot because the police would find her car parked at the side of the house and find out exactly who she was. She was trapped. Why had she been so foolish to think that such a large house like this wouldn’t be alarmed?

  Two uniformed officers got out of the police car and began walking to the front door.

  Elly fled upstairs, almost tripping over a Persian rug on the way. She took the wide stairs two at a time until she reached the landing. A long hallway lined with doors ran the width of the house and a second staircase led up to the upper floor. Obeying the flight instinct that told her to get as far away from the threat as possible, Elly bounded up the second staircase.

  At the top, another hallway ran the width of the house. Elly was about to choose a room to hide in when she noticed a trapdoor in the ceiling, presumably the entrance to the attic. A metal ring hung from the door and there was a pole with a hook on it resting against the wall at the far end of the hallway. Elly rushed to grab the pole and hooked the ring, pulling the trapdoor open. She cringed inwardly when a wooden ladder slid down to the floor with a loud clatter.

  There was a knock on the front door. Three sharp raps.

  Taking the pole with her, Elly ascended the ladder. When she got to the top, she knelt over the open space, reached down with the pole and snagged the ladder, pulling it up after her. The trapdoor closed and she was plunged into darkness.

  Faintly, she heard more knocking on the front door.

  As her eyes adjusted, she realised she wasn’t in total darkness. Two small circular windows positioned under the eaves, one at the back of the house and one at the front, allowed a meagre splash of light to get into the attic from outside. Elly went to the window at the front of the house and looked down at the police car parked on the gravel.

  She couldn’t see the front door from this angle but she could hear the voices of the two policemen below.

  “Looks like no one’s home.”

  “Want to try the back door?”

  Elly tensed, willing them not to go around to the back door. They’d find her car. They’d know she was here. It would all be over.

  There was a pause before she heard, “No, he’s probably gone out for the day. Come on, let’s get out of this bloody rain.”

  She watched them go back to their vehicle and get in. The engine kicked into life and the car drove back to the wooded track before disappearing behind the trees.

  Elly let out the breath she’d been holding.

  She searched for a light switch and found one on a wooden joist near the trapdoor. Two bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling flickered into life, giving off a sallow glow that hardly illuminated anything.

  From what Elly could see in the dim glow, the attic was dusty, festooned with cobwebs, and mostly an empty space like the rooms below. A pair of bicycles, one a girl’s pink Barbie bike, the other a boy’s black ten-speed racer, were propped against the wall, gathering dust. A green skateboard sat on the floor next to the racer. At the rear section of the attic, half a dozen cardboard boxes had been placed haphazardly.

  Elly opened each one, finding old clothes, bedding, curtains, toys, and board games. There was nothing here that could aid her in her investigation. She finis
hed searching the final box and sat on the wooden floor, sighing in frustration. There was nothing here that implicated Michael Walker or exonerated him.

  “What did you expect?” she asked herself. “A signed confession?”

  She noticed another box on the far side of the attic, half hidden in shadow. This one was draped with an old pink blanket. When Elly pulled the blanket away, she saw that it wasn’t a box that had been hidden beneath the blanket but a small, blue, steel trunk.

  Elly lifted one of the handles on the side and pulled the trunk tentatively, testing its weight. It scraped across the wooden floor. She pulled it out of the shadows and into the dim light. Two metal clasps held the lid closed but there were no locks.

  Elly steeled herself before lifting the lid. Hearing tales of the mutilation of victims was one thing but what if she opened this trunk and found the remains of such a victim? What if she lifted the lid and saw Sarah Walker’s dead face staring at her?

  “Come on, Elly,” she told herself, “you can do this. It’s important.”

  She unfastened the clasps and lifted the trunk lid.

  When she saw what was inside, she let out a breath of relief.

  The trunk was filled with photos.

  “See?” she said. “It’s nothing, you scaredy-cat.”

  She took out a photo and examined it. It was difficult to see clearly in the low light but it seemed to be an old family snap of a young boy and girl. Elly knew what Sarah Walker looked like from a school photo in the article about her disappearance and was sure it was Sarah in the picture. She held it directly beneath one of the bare bulbs to get a better look.

  In the photo, Sarah was sitting on the pink Barbie bike on the lawn in front of Edge House, looking at the camera but not smiling. Her face was set in a defiant expression, her lips tight, eyes slightly narrowed. Now that Elly thought about it, she hadn’t been smiling in the school picture either but instead had offered the school photographer that same defiant look.