When I last saw them, I knew that I couldn’t just do nothing about what they’d told me. Now I know what I have to do.
“I bet you’d do anything to not have those horrible things happen to you anymore,” I say.
Evie nods, tears streaming down her face. The false bravado she displayed last time is gone. There isn’t a shred of it left.
“I know what might cheer us up,” I say.
“What?” they both ask in unison.
“You see those woods over there? I bet we can find some bluebells in there.”
Mary frowns and shakes her head. “I don’t like the woods. They’re dark and scary.”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Evie tells her.
“Come on,” I say. “We’ll be fine.” I take their hands and lead them towards the dark woods. There aren’t any bluebells there at the moment, of course, because it’s winter. But next spring, I’ll make sure there’s a special patch of bluebells in these woods, a patch selected specially for these two girls.
As we reach the trees, I repeat a single sentence over and over in my head.
No more suffering.
“Do you know how much farther it is to the B&B?” Penny Meadows asks from the passenger seat. There’s a note of concern in her voice and a worried look on her face. I wonder how long I’ve been silent while remembering the past. The anger I felt earlier hasn’t vanished, but remembering Evie and Mary Hatton has made me feel a little calmer.
It has also made me realise what I must do now.
I slam on the brakes. The car skids to a stop. I forget to put my foot on the clutch and the engine stalls. The dashboard glows with warning lights.
“Is everything okay?” Penny asks.
“Get out,” I say.
“What? Listen, if I said something to offend you—-”
“Get out. Now.”
“Okay, okay. I’m going.” She opens the door and slides out, taking the rucksack with her. As soon as the door closes, I start the engine and drive away, leaving her by the side of the road.
After following the road for another four or five miles, I pull over again and let out a long breath. I had almost let my stupid impulses destroy the purity of what I’m doing. The bluebell grave and the daisy grave are a testament to my work and those buried in them. Penny Meadows is not in the same league as my girls. The flower graves are earned through pain and suffering, something Penny Meadows probably thinks she knows something about but does not.
I put the car in gear and resume following the road through Dark Peak. The rain becomes torrential and batters the car and the surrounding moors like tears of the gods.
21
Night Call
DCI Stewart Battle woke up fast when his phone started to vibrate on the bedside table. He jabbed the screen and brought the phone to his ear quickly, whispering into it so as not to wake Rowena, who was sleeping next to him.
“Battle.”
“We’ve got a body, guv.” It was DS Morgan.
Battle could hear the wind blowing on the other end of the line as well as outside his bedroom window. Each gust blew a thousand raindrops against the glass. “Have you called the SOCOs?”
“I called you first. I thought that considering where the body is, you’d want to be the first to know.”
He felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “It’s at the Edge.” It wasn’t a question, merely a statement of fact.
“That’s right, guv.”
“Right, text me the exact location and call the SOCOs.” He hung up and climbed out of bed, dressing quickly in the dark.
Rowena stirred. “What’s happened?”
“There’s a body at Blackden Edge,” he told her as he buckled his belt.
She sat up in bed. “Oh no, not another one. Is it connected to the others?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything yet. If it is connected, then hopefully the bastard will have slipped up this time and we’ll get him.” He glanced at the rain-battered window. “Although judging by the weather, it’s likely that any evidence will have been washed away.”
“You be careful,” she told him. “It’s treacherous enough up there without gale force winds and rain.”
“I’m always careful. You go back to sleep and don’t worry about me.” He went around to her side of the bed and kissed her before leaving the bedroom.
“You know I always worry,” she called after him.
When he got downstairs, he turned on the kitchen light and checked the clock on the wall. Three thirty. Bloody hell, he needed a strong coffee. But there was no time for that so he opened the fridge and took out a can of Coke. At least there was some caffeine in it and he could drink it on the way. Before he closed the fridge, he took out a second can for DS Morgan.
His Range Rover was parked in the garage, which was connected to the kitchen by a door so he didn’t have to go out in the rain and get soaked before even going anywhere. Thank heavens for small mercies. He’d have plenty of time to get wet later when he was out on the Edge looking at the body.
Grabbing his coat and hat from the stand by the front door, he went through the kitchen to the garage and loaded everything into his vehicle. He climbed in and hit the button on the remote control that opened the garage door. As it slid up, it revealed the dark, rainswept street. Some of the neighbours had put their wheelie bins out for tomorrow’s recycling collection and at least three had blown over, spilling their contents. The wind blew empty bottles and cans over the road.
Battle drove onto the road carefully, avoiding a scattering of glass where a bottle had been blown into the kerb and had shattered.
Once he was on the road that led north through the Peak District to Dark Peak, Battle opened one of the Cokes and sipped it. The sugar-hit woke him up a little but he’d give anything for a decent coffee or cup of tea right now. He had a forty-minute drive ahead and then a trudge over wet grass and rocks in the type of weather that killed people in the wild places.
Maybe the body at the Edge was a hiker who’d been blown off one of the ridges that surrounded the ravine. Or somebody who’d died of exposure. God knew it was possible up there in that terrain.
He pushed those thoughts away. DS Morgan wouldn’t have called him if it were a hiker who’d lost their way or a climber who’d been foolhardy. There was a girl at the Edge and she’d been murdered. That much he was sure of.
His phone dinged. Battle pulled over to the side of the road to read the text. He’d seen the consequences of drivers not paying attention to the road; he wasn’t taking any chances. This body could hold a clue to the identity of the Blackden Edge Murderer and he could hardly apprehend the killer if he were in a hospital bed, injured by his own stupidity.
The text from DS Morgan was brief but told him everything he needed to know. Two uniforms will meet you at Leath.
Battle put the phone down and got back on the road. He realised his theory that Michael Walker could be guilty of the Blackden Edge murders might have to be thrown out. There was no way Walker committed murder from beyond the grave. That put Battle back to square one. He sighed and took another sip of Coke.
Forty minutes later, when he turned off Snake Road and onto the road for Leath, he spotted two police officers in hi-vis jackets standing at the side of the road. A number of police vehicles were parked nearby, including the white van the SOCOs used.
Battle parked the Range Rover in front of the line of vehicles, struggled into his coat in the confines of the car, and got out. He left his hat on the passenger seat. There was no way it was going to stay on his head in this wind. Slipping DS Morgan’s Coke into his coat pocket, he walked around to the back of the Range Rover and opened it to get his walking gear.
Working the Peak District meant carrying the proper equipment at all times. Battle had walking boots, spare clothing, and even vacuum-packed meals stowed in the boot of the Range Rover. He put on a blue waterproof poncho before changing his shoes for a pair of Karrimor walking b
oots and donning a black knitted watch cap in lieu of his usual tweed hat.
After taking out a walking pole, he strode over to the uniformed officers, whom he recognised as Badwal and Stern. Badwal was a Sikh and wore a black turban instead of a hat. Stern wore the bowler style female officer’s hat with her dark hair pinned up beneath it. The hat was pressed down hard onto her head in an effort to keep it from blowing away. Stern still had to hold it with her hand. Both she and Badwal looked wet and miserable.
“Right,” Battle said when he reached them. “Let’s get going.”
They led him through a gate and into an overgrown field through which a path led to a low wall on the opposite side of the field.
“How was the body found?” Battle asked.
“A man and a woman were camping at the Edge,” Stern said. “When the weather closed in, they decided to abandon their campsite and head back to their car. During their travels, they stumbled over the victim. They legged it to the village and dialled 999 from the phone box there. They hadn’t taken their phones onto the Edge with them. Wanted to get away from it all, apparently.”
“Tell me about the couple.” Battle was surprised at how out of breath he sounded. They’d hardly walked halfway across the field. This bloody case was going to be the death of him yet.
“Officer Badwal took their statement, sir,” she said.
“James and Marie Mitchener,” Badwal said. “From Nottingham. She’s a computer analyst and he’s a website designer. They fancied a couple of nights in the wild.”
“Does their story check out?”
“They’re being taken to the station to be interviewed now, sir, but I didn’t get any bad vibes from them.”
“Bad vibes? Is that what policing has come to now? If only it were that easy. What do we know about the girl?”
“Girl, sir?” Stern asked.
“The victim. Unless our killer has changed his MO, it’s a girl. It’s always a girl.”
“They haven’t identified her yet, sir. DS Morgan is at the scene, along with the SOCOs.”
They reached the low stone wall. Beyond it, the trail led down to Blackden Brook and then alongside the brook into the ravine that was Blackden Edge. There was a public right of way here, so a narrow gap had been left in the wall to allow access. Battle squeezed through, followed by Stern and Badwal.
“We need more uniforms,” he told them. “I want a fingertip search of the area. I don’t care how many officers have to be pulled out of bed, I need them here while the scene is still fresh.”
“Yes, sir,” Stern said.
When they reached the brook, Battle could see lights farther along the path. As he got closer, he saw the white square tent that had been erected around the body. Its sides trembled in the wind. There were lights inside, powered by a generator that some poor sod must have lugged all the way here from the van. Two SOCOs were outside the tent, dressed in white protective clothing and masks.
The tent and the officers looked out of place in the countryside, as if they were aliens who had landed in the middle of nowhere to examine humankind and had found only death.
Blue-and-white crime-scene tape fluttered in the wind, stretched between two metal poles on either side of the path. A uniform in a hi-vis jacket stood sentry by it. When he saw and recognised Battle, he lifted the tape and said, “Sir,” with a slight nod as Battle passed beneath it.
DS Morgan stood outside the tent, the light suffusing through the PVC walls giving her face a ghostly pallor. Like Battle, she wore a blue waterproof poncho and a black watch cap.
“What have we got?” Battle asked.
“Female in her twenties,” she said. “No ID yet. If she was up here walking, she wasn’t dressed appropriately.”
“Cause of death?”
“Looks like strangulation.”
“Same as Josie Wagner,” he said, pulling back the flap of the tent and stepping inside.
The girl lay on her back, blue eyes staring at the roof of the tent. She wore jeans and a black sweater but the jeans had been slashed in the area of her upper thighs and the sweater had been slashed in the breast area. She wore white Reebok trainers that were barely mud-stained. In contrast, her long black hair was splayed out around her head and covered with mud. A dark bruise stretched from one side of her throat to the other. The harsh glow of the portable lights bleached her flesh a garish white but even so, Battle could see she was pretty.
He felt a stab of pity for the girl. No one should end up like this, discarded in the mud like a piece of trash.
Two SOCOs were removing fibres from her clothing with tweezers and placing them in clear plastic evidence bags.
Battle didn’t need to see a lab report to understand what had happened here. The Blackden Edge Killer had struck again. There were some differences between the state of this body and that of Josie Wagner—the only other victim left in the open for the police to find, but the MO was the same.
He left the tent and stepped back out into the wind and rain where DS Morgan waited.
“What do you think, guv?” she asked.
“It’s clear enough,” he said. “Our boy has come out to play again.”
“You noticed the different slash wounds, though,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. She knew he’d noticed the differences between the slashes on this victim and those on Josie Wagner.
Battle nodded. “They’re weak, hesitant. There’s none of the ferocity he expressed when he caused Josie’s wounds.”
“You think it’s a different person?”
“We can’t rule it out. But remember, Josie’s murder took place forty years ago. The killer is older now, weaker.”
“Not too weak to strangle Jane Doe in there.”
“No, and not too weak to move her body here either. She wasn’t killed on the Edge. Not unless the killer removed her coat and put those Reebok trainers on her feet. There was barely a speck of dirt on them. She was killed somewhere else and then carried here. So if he had the strength to do that, why the weak slashes?”
DS Morgan shrugged. “I don’t know, guv.”
The tent opened and one of the SOCOs poked his head out. “Detectives, we’ve turned the body over. You may want to see this.”
Battle and Morgan went back inside. The victim now lay on her stomach. The other SOCO was moving around the body, taking photos from various angles.
When Battle saw what was lying in the mud where the Jane Doe had been positioned, his thoughts went to the letter the police had received eighteen years ago, the one with the damned flower poetry on it.
Embedded in the mud, illuminated by the stark lights, was a single red rose.
22
From the Shadows
A noise woke Mitch. He sat up in bed, listening, unsure if the sound had been a part of his dreams. When no further sound came, he slipped out of bed and padded over to the window.
Outside, the moors glowed a ghostly silver beneath the gibbous moon. The gale drove sheets of rain over the landscape and against Edge House. Mitch told himself that what he’d heard had been nothing more than something outside blowing over in the wind, but now that he thought about it, hadn’t it sounded as if it had come from inside the house?
He looked down at the walled garden beneath the window. The gate was open. It was the gate that led to the moors, the one he and Sarah had walked through that fateful night thirty years ago. Had it blown open? No, it couldn’t have; he’d seen a hasp and padlock attached to the gate earlier and it had been locked.
His mind began to race. If someone was going to try and break in, the back door wasn’t really an option now that he’d secured it. Was the sound he’d heard come from a window breaking? He scanned the room for a weapon but found none. The room he’d chosen to sleep in had been empty except for a bed, a bedside table upon which stood a lamp, and a wardrobe that held nothing except empty clothes hangers.
With nothing else to hand, Mitch unplugged the lamp and wielded it like a
club. He wasn’t sure how much damage he could do with it—the base and stem were made of light wood and the shade was cream-coloured fabric—but he couldn’t face the intruder unarmed.
If there is an intruder, he told himself. The padlock on the gate could have been so old and rusty that it broke when the wind blew against the gate.
But even as he tried to convince himself of that possibility, he knew he was kidding himself. Someone had broken onto the property from the moors. It could be the same person who had broken in before and tried to find the journal, in which case it was his father’s accomplice, if Elly’s theory was correct. The man Battle was looking for, a man connected in some way with the murders of at least six girls—including Sarah—was in the house.
Mitch needed to get to his phone and call the police. But it was sitting on the coffee table in the living room, charging up. And sitting next to it was the journal.
Mitch couldn’t let the journal slip through his fingers and end up in the hands of the man who may have murdered his father.
He slipped out of the room and onto the landing. Moonlight slanted in through the windows, lighting the landing with the same ghostly glow it had lent the moors. Mitch listened to the house around him. Everything seemed quiet. Had the intruder heard him get out of bed? Was he waiting in the darkness downstairs, ready to strike if Mitch blundered down there?
Mitch walked to the top of the stairs and peered at the dark foyer below. He held the lamp tightly but knew that if he had to use it to hit someone, it would probably just break. Standing here in his pyjamas, the flimsy lamp in his hand, he felt exposed, vulnerable. He was standing in the exact spot his father had been standing when he fell—or was pushed—down the stairs.
Reflexively, Mitch checked the landing he was standing on, half-expecting to see a dark figure rush out of the shadows towards him, hands spread, ready to topple him over the edge of the top step. But there was no one there. Mitch let out a long, low breath.
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