He knew that facing it would be for the best, though. A worse ending would be to never find the grave of forget-me-nots and never know for certain what had happened to his sister.
“Listen,” he said, “I’ve been thinking. What if Michael was innocent? I think the journal might belong to Silas and my dad somehow got his hands on it.”
“Speaking of the journal,” Elly said, “I’m going to have to tell the police about it, Mitch.”
He sighed in resignation. He’d hoped to keep the journal a secret from the police, at least until he’d used it to find Sarah, but that was impossible now. He supposed that since the journal was back in the hands of the killer, it didn’t really matter anyway. “It’s okay. It’s either that or tell them you’re psychic.”
“Yeah, there’s a DCI here who wants to know how the hell I pinpointed the location of Lindsey’s body. Of course, he isn’t saying it’s Lindsey but I think we all know it is.”
“Is it Battle?”
“That’s right,” she said. “DCI Battle. He’s a grumpy old sod.”
Mitch grinned. “His day probably just got a lot busier.”
Elly gasped as if suddenly realising something. “Of course, you don’t know about the body they found last night, do you?”
“What body?”
“They just released her name an hour ago. It’s a girl named Rhonda Knowles. They found her body at Blackden Edge. She’d been strangled and slashed with a knife.”
“Just like Josie Wagner,” he said.
“Yeah, just like Josie.”
Mitch’s hand instinctively went to the bandage that covered the wound in his side. He wondered if the knife that had sliced into his flesh was the same knife that had been used to kill a woman at Blackden Edge hours earlier.
25
From the Grave
“I don’t know if I should take you to the station and interview you under caution or just take a statement from you now,” DCI Battle said to Elly. He was standing next to her Mini, his manner gruff. Elly and Jen were leaning against the car, watching police personnel teeming over the moors.
“There’s no need to take me to the station,” Elly said. “I have an alibi for New Year’s Eve, 1999. I was at a night club in Birmingham celebrating the arrival of the new millennium. In fact, my sister was with me. Do you remember that night, Jen? You were off your face by midnight.” She was beginning to regret letting the police in on this. But she couldn’t think like that. Lindsey had been found. That was all that mattered.
Battle grimaced. “All right, there’s no need to be smart-arsed about it. I know who you are. Working on a new book, aren’t you? That’s what Gordon Farley told me, anyway. So how did your research lead you here?” He indicated the moor with a wave of his hand.
Elly decided the best way to deal with Battle was just to tell him the truth. He looked like the type of man who valued honesty and wouldn’t stand for anything less. “I deciphered a clue in a journal,” she told him.
Battle appeared lost for words. His forehead furrowed and he stared at Elly for a moment before asking his next question very slowly, as if he were trying to control his emotions. “What bloody journal?”
“Mitch found it in his dad’s safe deposit box. At first, it seemed like nothing more than a journal of walks in the countryside with drawings but it actually describes the graves the girls are buried in. The poem that was sent to the police after Lindsey disappeared contained lines from the journal.”
“Why am I only hearing about this now?” Battle asked no one in particular. He gazed up at the grey sky and let out a long breath. When he looked at Elly again, his eyes were steely. “Right, where’s this journal? I want it.”
“It’s gone,” she said. “The intruder that broke into Edge House last night stole it.”
“Of course he did,” Battle said, throwing up his hands in frustration. “Why should I have expected anything else? The only piece of concrete evidence we might have had to put the bastard away has been stolen, probably by the murderer himself.”
Elly shrugged. She could understand Battle’s frustration but there was nothing she could do or say to alleviate it. The journal was gone and there was nothing she could do about it.
The understanding she felt for Battle paled in comparison to the sympathy she felt for Mitch. The detective had lost a piece of evidence but the journal had been Mitch’s only chance to find his sister. There was no question who had lost the most when it had been stolen.
A female detective with long dark hair, who had been leaning on a green Range Rover talking into a phone, shouted to Battle, “The preliminary lab reports on Miss Knowles are ready, guv.”
Battle nodded to her. “Right,” he said to Elly and Jen. “You two go back to your cottage and stay there. I’ll send an officer around to get your statement. I don’t want either of you to leave the area for a while. At least not until I’ve gotten to the bottom of this journal business.”
“But I’m supposed to go home tomorrow,” Jen protested. “I have a husband and kids.”
“Jen had nothing to do with this,” Elly said. “I just brought her along for the ride. She didn’t know anything about the grave and she’s never seen the journal.”
Battle inspected each sister in turn, his eyes narrowed. Then he said to Jen, “When I’ve reviewed your statement, I’ll decide if you can go home yet or not. All right?”
Jen nodded meekly.
“Until then, stay put,” Battle said, turning to the Range Rover. He walked a few steps and then turned back to Elly and Jen. “And be careful. There’s a murderer out there somewhere.” He resumed his walk to the Range Rover and got into the driver’s side, saying something to the dark-haired detective, who was already in the passenger seat, before starting the engine and tearing off up the road.
“He has to let me go home,” Jen said, a note of concern in her voice. “He can’t keep me here.”
“That was all bluster,” Elly assured her as she got into the Mini. “Don’t worry, you’ll see Trevor and the kids tomorrow.”
Jen climbed in next to her and said, “You really shouldn’t have gotten me involved in all this, Elly.”
Elly started the engine. “I had no idea we were going to find that grave. It was a long shot.”
“But now we have found it and I’m mixed up in all of this.” Jen turned her face away from Elly and stared out of her window silently.
Elly put the Mini into gear and guided it past the police cars and vans parked on both sides of the road. The police had closed the road to the public and, after driving for a couple of minutes, Elly saw a group of uniformed officers keeping members of the public and press on the other side of a length of police tape that had been stretched across the road.
Elly slowed the car, surprised that the gathered crowd was so large. She could see vans bearing the logos of several news channels and there were reporters talking to various cameras, positioning themselves so that the police cordon was visible in the background of their shot.
The uniformed officers waved Elly through and removed the tape to let her pass. As soon as she was on the other side of the cordon, reporters flocked to the Mini, shoving their microphones at the windows and gesturing for Elly to roll the windows down. Some of them stood in front of the car, slowing Elly’s progress. She kept moving forward slowly enough not to kill anyone but fast enough to make it clear she wasn’t going to stop.
One of the reporters shouted, “Aren’t you the writer Elly Cooper? Is this something to do with the Eastbourne Ripper?” She indicated to her camerawoman to point the lens at Elly. Then she asked, “Miss Cooper, what can you tell us about what the police found on the moors? Is it one of the Ripper’s victims?” and pointed her microphone at Elly’s window.
Elly recognised the blonde reporter as Jillian Street, a freelancer who, when Elly had been interviewing Leonard Sims, had knocked on Elly’s front door and pointed a camera in her face, trying to get a scoop on what the Eastbourne
Ripper was telling the only person he’d let inside his mind.
Elly had told her to get the hell off her property before she called the police and had only seen Jillian Street one more time since then, when the reporter had turned up at a book signing in Manchester and asked Elly what information the Ripper had divulged that hadn’t made it into the book. Did Elly know where some of his undiscovered victims’ remains were buried?
Despite wanting to get past the throng of reporters as quickly as possible and despite her reluctance to give Jillian Street a story, Elly had to let Street know that there was more to who she was and what she did than just the Eastbourne Ripper. Her life and career wasn’t defined by a single case.
So she put her window down and said, “No, this has nothing to do with the Eastbourne Ripper. Some of us have moved on since then, Miss Street.” She pressed the button that slid the window back up and stared dead ahead, gunning the engine slightly to warn the vultures in front of the car that they’d better get of the way or else.
They reluctantly stepped aside and she accelerated away.
When the reporters and their vehicles were nothing more than an indistinguishable dot of colour against the bleak landscape in the rear-view mirror, Jen turned to Elly and said, “Why did you have to do that? Why did you have to speak to them?” She’d shrunk back into her seat and appeared more shaken by the experience of facing the cameras than that of finding a dead girl’s grave.
“Ever since Heart of a Killer came out, everyone associates me with the Eastbourne Ripper. I don’t want my name to be synonymous with Leonard Sims. I have to show the world that there’s more to me than that. I refuse to be defined by that evil bastard. I want to put him behind me but I can’t do that until everyone else lets me.”
“Well, they’ll let you do that now,” Jen said. “You found that poor girl’s grave.”
“Yes,” Elly said, feeling a sudden flood of emotion. Because of her, one of the lost ones was no longer lost. “Yes, I did.” Her eyes blurred with tears and she pulled over to the side of the road. Killing the engine, she put her hands to her face and wept. She wasn’t sure if she was crying with elation at finding Lindsey Grofield or with pity after seeing the place where the girl had lain, lost to the world, for eighteen years.
All she knew was that the emotions that had been building up inside her ever since she found out about the lost girls needed to be released.
Jen reached across and drew Elly into a hug. Saying nothing, she simply held her sister while Elly’s raw emotions spilled out.
I can’t believe what I’m seeing on television. It makes my blood boil and my skin prickle with rage. According to the news, the police have found a body at Blackden Edge. They say the girl, named Rhonda Knowles, was found there last night. She’s been strangled and slashed with a knife.
This can’t be. Is someone playing with me? Taunting me?
I was nowhere near Blackden Edge last night and I’ve never heard of Rhonda Knowles. She isn’t one of my girls. So why has she been left at the Edge in the same sorry state in which I left Josie Wagner all those years ago?
If I was at home right now, I might put a fist through the television, so angry has the newscast made me. But I’m not at home, I’m in the cafe in Matlock and the television is bolted high on the wall behind the serving counter. I’m not the only customer watching the screen; the discovery of a body so close to here has everyone enthralled.
An old woman sitting in the booth opposite catches my eye. “It’s a travesty,” she says. “No one deserves that.”
“She certainly didn’t,” I say. I realise I’m holding the handle of my teacup so tightly that it might break. I loosen my grip and force myself to breathe deeply. The air smells of cooking oil and coffee. I try to focus on that and not on the scenes playing out on the screen, but the broadcast catches my attention as surely as a trap springing shut on a mouse.
The newsreader puts a finger to her ear for a moment and then says to the camera, “We’re getting reports that police in Derbyshire have now found a second body. Apparently this second body was found on the moors twenty-five miles South of Blackden Edge where Rhonda Knowles’ body was discovered. We have this report from Jillian Street.”
The screen changes to a view of the road near Stanton Moor. I know the road well but I’ve never seen it like this, with police vehicles and news vans parked everywhere. Half a dozen officers stand behind a police line, keeping reporters and local busybodies away.
A blonde woman is standing on the grass by the side of the road, a microphone in her hand as she talks to the camera. “We’re not exactly sure yet whose body the police have found on the moor situated behind me but we do know that a number of scenes of crime officers, or SOCOs, drove down this road an hour ago and have yet to emerge. A local helicopter pilot flew over the area half an hour ago and apparently he saw a number of officers digging in an area near a stone circle called the Nine Ladies.”
I put the teacup down and grab the edge of the table, holding on tightly, feeling as if the cafe is tipping and rolling like a boat on a stormy sea. They’ve found Lindsey Grofield’s grave. How can this be? And on the same day that they find a body at Blackden Edge, a murder victim who is nothing to do with me?
Mitch must have led the police to the grave. He has the journal, and the location of Lindsey’s grave isn’t too hard to figure out from my poetic little passage in there. I should have been more obtuse in my word choices but when I wrote about Lindsey, I was getting sloppy. The journal hadn’t been seen by another living soul for over twenty-five years and I was overconfident. How was I to know Michael Walker would steal it from me eighteen years later? He’s ruined everything.
Now his son has the journal and now Lindsey is no longer in her grave of flowers, a grave I have tended lovingly since burying her there.
On the television screen, a blue Mini can be seen driving out from behind the police cordon. The reporter rushes over to it and pushes her microphone at the driver’s window. There’s a redhead behind the wheel and a blonde in the passenger seat. Who are they? Did they stumble upon the grave by accident?
No, that’s not possible.
The reporter seems to know who the driver is. She says, “Aren’t you the writer Elly Cooper? Is this something to do with the Eastbourne Ripper?” The camera zooms in on the redhead and the reporter says, “Miss Cooper, what can you tell us about what the police found on the moors? Is it one of the Ripper’s victims?” Again, she shoves her microphone at the car window.
I realise I’ve seen this woman before. She was at Edge House with Mitch, standing in the window as I watched her from the woods. I knew she was familiar. Elly Cooper, the writer. Has she seen my own writings in the journal? Did Mitch show it to her and she figured out my reference to the Ladies?
The car window opens and Elly Cooper looks directly at the camera, saying, “No, this has nothing to do with the Eastbourne Ripper. Some of us have moved on since then, Miss Street.” The window buzzes back up and she stares straight ahead, forcing her way through the other reporters.
As the Mini drives away, the camera again focuses on the reporter. “Well, this is interesting. Elly Cooper, the author of Heart of a Killer, seems to have been at the site where the police discovered the body. Despite Miss Cooper’s claims otherwise, this could mean that the body on the moors is a victim of Leonard Sims, the Eastbourne Ripper. It doesn’t fit what we know of Sims because he buried his victims in the Eastbourne area but the presence of Elly Cooper is strong evidence that Sims wandered farther afield and buried one of his victims here in Derbyshire.”
No. No, no, no, no. This won’t do at all. Lindsey Grofield was not the victim of a serial killer from Eastbourne. I gave her eternal rest from her cruel life and honoured her memory by giving her a grave of flowers. No one else is going to take the credit for that. The police have obviously allowed Elly Cooper onto their investigation. Is she some sort of psychologist? What does she know about me?
&nb
sp; I get up from the table and walk unsteadily to the door. The air outside is cool and damp and for a moment it invigorates me. Then I remember that Lindsey is no longer where I put her and a wave of nausea creeps over me. I lean against the wall with one hand, causing a passer-by to ask me if I’m all right. I nod and stagger forward, making my way to the car.
By the time I get behind the wheel, I don’t feel any better about the situation but I’m thinking more clearly. I have no idea how the body of a girl named Rhonda Knowles came to be at Blackden Edge but I do know that I didn’t put it there. I can’t worry about that now; it has nothing to do with my girls.
I feel rage and sadness that Lindsey has been taken from her grave but also a renewed sense of purpose.
Tonight, I’ll drive to Manchester. There are plenty of girls there only too willing to get into my car, girls who are already lost to the world and won’t be missed by anyone when they’re gone.
The girl who gets into my car tonight will be given a gift, something she won’t be able to thank me for but something she longs for deep down inside without even realising it.
Her miserable life will end and she will know no more suffering.
26
The Visit
“You seem to be in quite good condition considering what you’ve been through,” the doctor said, switching off the pen light he’d been shining into Mitch’s eyes. “The wound in your side isn’t deep at all. It’s a good thing you were falling backwards at the time you were stabbed or we might be looking at something much more serious. You’ve suffered a concussion but there’s no sign of brain injury.”
“When can I get out of here?” Mitch asked. There was too much happening for him to be stuck in hospital. He wanted to talk to Elly about her conversation with the police. He wanted to talk to Battle about his investigation into the Blackden Edge Murderer. That investigation must surely be further along now that the police presumably had clues from Lindsey Grofield’s body and the body of Rhonda Knowles.
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