You Can Run

by Steve Mosby

  ‘But couldn’t that be Townsend?’ Emma said. ‘We – you – think Blythe had help escaping from Moorton yesterday, and we know Townsend was there. Maybe he was involved with the whole thing from the start?’

  I thought back to my impressions of Townsend upon meeting him that first time. Did he strike me as someone who might murder his wife? As much as you could tell: yes, of course he did; all sorts of people kill their partners, and many of them plan it out meticulously in advance. Townsend had been nervous, flustered. Guilty. So I could just about see him as an intellectual who had got out of his depth then realised his plan wasn’t as foolproof as he might have thought. But could I see him aiding and abetting a multiple murderer over two decades?

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘I don’t think that’s his story at all.’

  ‘Interesting choice of words.’

  ‘Is it?’

  I was distracted, thinking all this through. None of it was clear right now, but I was convinced we were heading in the right direction. Blythe hadn’t written those letters. And Townsend was involved somehow.

  ‘Let’s go back to the letter writer,’ I said. ‘Whoever it is, let’s agree that they didn’t just get lucky with Rebecca Brown. So they must have known what Blythe was doing. Either in on it too – a genuine accomplice – or just somebody who knew what he was capable of and had been keeping track of him. Either way. . .’ I trailed off.

  ‘Will?’

  ‘Either way,’ I said, ‘that’s a bond that must have developed a long time ago. We’re looking for somebody from his past. Somebody from—’

  ‘Moorton?’

  ‘Yes. Somebody he grew up with.’

  I turned my attention to the computer on my side of the desk. I loaded up the case file, then began to click through the reports we’d received until I found the ones I wanted.

  Emma said, ‘We don’t know anything about his friends from back then. That information isn’t going to be there.’

  ‘I’m not looking for a friend.’

  ‘Then. . .’

  ‘Give me a second.’

  On the screen, I had the list of earlier crimes that had been sent through from Moorton. A couple of days back, it hadn’t been a priority, and I’d only scanned through them briefly, not particularly interested. I’d imagined that we would eventually find past murders that Blythe could be linked to – that he hadn’t emerged fully formed – but at that point the focus had been on finding the man in the present. The rest could wait.

  There were forty or fifty listings of unsolved offences, most of them burglaries or break-ins. None of those were likely to be our man, I thought. Blythe had always attacked his victims outdoors; he wasn’t a home invader. Some vehicle thefts. Five rapes, over a period of several years. Two murders.

  I clicked on the first.

  As I scanned through the onscreen details, I felt a shiver run down my back.

  ‘Jennifer Johnson,’ I said. ‘Found murdered on 21 August 1987. She was sixteen years old. Blythe would have been eighteen. The killer was never caught. Her body was found in an area north of the village, close to a spot known locally as Frog Pond.’

  ‘Shit, Will.’

  I looked up at Emma and gave her a sad smile.

  ‘I don’t remember clicking on this, but maybe I did. Maybe that’s why the name Frog Pond stood out for me when I heard it from Carling. Jennifer Johnson must have been Blythe’s first victim. That was why he returned to the scene. That was how whoever helped him knew where to pick him up.’

  But how had Townsend known? I continued reading down the screen.

  ‘She was pronounced dead at the scene,’ I said. ‘No sign of sexual violence. Found face down in the water with her throat cut.’

  Emma was staring at her own screen now, reading the file for herself.

  ‘The red river,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  And then I reached the next detail and stopped reading. The world receded around me. For a moment, there was just the words on the screen – the connection, blatant now, staring me in the face. All along I’d been focusing on the men. Blythe. Rob. Townsend. Me. I should have been thinking about the victims instead: the women who had suffered and died and who deserved to be kept at the heart of the investigation. The ones who should have been the focus of it all along.

  I looked away from the screen, at the copy of Townsend’s book on the desk.

  ‘Shit,’ Emma said, and I knew she had just reached the detail that had stopped me in my tracks. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I was still staring at Townsend’s book. Thinking about the title. The subject matter. The dedication. For Melanie, with all my love.

  ‘Johnson’s body was found by her best friend, Melanie West.’

  Thirty-Eight

  With Blythe sleeping on the settee, and everything else in place, Bunting sat in the armchair and finally allowed himself to relax.

  There was a lot left to do, of course, and any number of things that could still go wrong, but so far it had all worked out perfectly and his plot was unfolding exactly as he’d intended. In the beginning, the obstacles had seemed insurmountable, but they hadn’t been. He’d overcome each of them in turn. That was the way it worked when you were clever. One task at a time and eventually it was all accomplished, just like writing a story was ultimately a simple matter of placing one word after another. You should have had more faith in yourself, he thought, and it felt good because it was true. He was smarter than all of them.

  And as he often did in moments of calm, he thought about her.

  Jennifer Johnson.

  There was a time when he had been infatuated with her. For a start, there was that name – and it was always Jennifer, never Jenny. What appealed to him most about it was that it seemed to have come straight out of one of the comic books he used to lose himself in as a boy. There were exceptions, but so many of the characters in them had similarly alliterative names. Lois Lane and Lana Lang. Peter Parker. J. Jonah Jameson. Clark Kent – well, at least if you said it out loud. And so, Jennifer Johnson. It was a name that rolled off the tongue, with a small-town feel to it. If life really had been a comic book, she would surely have been an important character. Not the main one, obviously, as that part was reserved for him, but the superhero’s partner in some unsuspecting way. An intrepid journalist, perhaps. A plucky lawyer.

  In reality, she hadn’t been beautiful. An artist drawing her would have had to slim down her body a little, sharpen slightly ordinary features and frame her hair differently. She wasn’t the sort of girl who had boys chasing after her. But that was a positive thing, as Bunting had long ago recognised his own place in the pecking order. He was so far beneath it as to be practically invisible, and so Jennifer was attainable in a way that other girls clearly weren’t. Or at least he could dream she was.

  She had spoken to him once. In their early teens, she’d walked past him when he was sitting by himself on a bench in the street. What are you reading? she’d asked, and he’d shown her the cover of the comic he’d been engrossed in, his heart beating a little more quickly. Nothing. Just this. She’d stared at the comic blankly, and then nodded and said, Okay, bye. Not being rude, he decided at the time, just on her way somewhere.

  He’d tried to speak to her again after that, but she’d coldshouldered him each time. Not badly, though; not nastily. There were social pressures, he understood; she probably didn’t want to be seen with someone like him, regardless of what she actually felt, but he was confident she’d change her mind eventually. After all, she wasn’t that great either, was she? She wasn’t so far above him. He began to resent her attitude. He took to following her sometimes, trying to work out whether he loved or hated her, but he was always careful, and she never knew, and nobody else did either.

  Given what happened, he would realise later, that was incredibly fortunate. There could sometimes be advantages to being invisible.

  One summer’s day,
he followed her to Frog Pond.

  He didn’t know that was where she was going at first. He just spotted her wandering out of the village and decided he would go after her. It was a nice day, after all, and he had as much right to walk the country lanes outside the village as anybody. If he happened to bump into her. . . well, that was no crime, was it? So he followed her discreetly from a distance, a part of him hoping she might turn around and look over her shoulder – spot him a way back and maybe stop to say hello – but she never did. Perhaps if she had, everything would have turned out differently.

  At one point, he rounded a bend in the lane and she had disappeared. It was only when he walked further that he spotted the trail and figured out where she must have gone. Frog Pond. He knew of the place, of course; all the local children did. He’d even been down there himself a few times, although always alone, never part of the congregations of kids that hung out there together, smoking and drinking and doing all the other things he imagined they did. That was clearly where Jennifer was heading that day. Maybe she was meeting someone. He’d looked around, but the lane was empty. No sign of anybody else.

  Well – once again, he had a right to go there too, didn’t he?

  Even so, he’d waited a few minutes, so as not to look too suspicious, too obvious, when he arrived there after her. Then he’d set off, ambling slowly along the trail, taking his time, admiring the beautiful scenery and listening to the river as he drew closer. It really was a lovely day.

  But when he reached Frog Pond, Jennifer wasn’t there.

  He’d looked around, curious as to where she might have gone. The trail continued on through the woodland for a while, but the terrain quickly became much more difficult, and there was nowhere worthwhile to head to in that direction. So where could she be? He’d walked back to the Pond and stood there quietly, breathing in the smell of that green water and trying to think.

  And then he’d heard someone moving on the trail behind him.

  Immediately he had known it wasn’t her. It wasn’t the sound itself so much as the feeling of fear at the back of his neck: the kind of primal, ticking sensation you’d feel if a dangerous wild animal was nearby. He had turned around slowly and seen nobody. Then, very quietly, he had stepped back out on to the trail and looked right and then left – and there, disappearing further into that hazardous woodland, he’d seen John Blythe.

  The older boy never looked back. If he had, then once again things would have turned out very differently.

  Instead, Bunting watched him moving away. He was more frightened now. There was nothing hurried about Blythe. He seemed completely casual and almost indifferent to his surroundings. But Bunting could sense that something was wrong, not with Blythe himself, but with the world around him. He could feel Jennifer’s absence. She should have been here, but she wasn’t. Blythe had been, and now he was gone. He could hear the noise of the river, but other than that, the woods were empty and silent.

  He had walked tentatively back the way he’d come. Close by, he had found the break in the trees that led to the bank of the river itself, and stepped nervously through. He had seen Jennifer Johnson, lying at an awkward angle, with her head and shoulders in the water and blood streaming away in the river.

  And then, as the wood seemed to come alive with horror all around him, he had run.

  Bunting looked at Blythe now.

  Sleeping – imagine that. After everything that had happened. Blythe was in a seated position, with his arms folded and his chin resting on the top of his chest, and he was breathing slowly and steadily. He seemed completely calm and relaxed. The man was truly an astonishing creature. If anything, Bunting was more in awe of him than ever.

  Not that he blamed Blythe for being tired, of course. The last few days had presumably been wearing for him. Bunting himself was completely exhausted, but he wouldn’t have dared risk going to sleep right now. The adrenalin wouldn’t have allowed it anyway, but he didn’t trust in his safety. That was ridiculous on one level, as Blythe could easily have killed him by now if he’d wanted to, but it made total sense deep down. Blythe wasn’t the kind of man you let your guard down in front of. You might have the tamest lion in the world, but it was still an animal at heart, and it would respond accordingly to mistakes or displays of weakness.

  Blythe had always been different; Bunting had recognised that long before he’d found Jennifer Johnson’s body and come to understand exactly bow different. He’d often see the older boy around, albeit only ever from a distance. Blythe had been solitary and friendless just like Bunting, but the similarities between them had ended there. Blythe had clearly never felt misunderstood the way Bunting did. He had neither wanted nor sought out friendship. Not only had he been at ease with his loneliness, he’d actually seemed protective of it. Watching him as a teenager, Bunting had at first felt a sense of kinship, but he’d known deep down that he was flattering himself. He’d wished he could be as self-reliant as John Blythe was. Wished that he too could somehow not want all those things he didn’t have.

  Or that he might simply be able to take them.

  That was ultimately why he hadn’t reported what he’d seen at Frog Pond that day. It was officially Jennifer’s friend, Melanie West, who found the body, an hour or so later, by which point Bunting had been back in the village, sitting on his favourite bench and staring at a comic that he was only pretending to read while his mind ran over what had happened and what it meant. The fear that someone might have seen him there. The thrill he realised it gave him to have such knowledge. The possibilities it offered him.

  The secret power.

  The Monster.

  In all the years since, aside from their email communication, Bunting had never spoken directly to John Blythe. Never had a conversation with him in the flesh. And so it was slightly bewildering to realise now that he’d spent most of the night doing precisely that. After Blythe had seen what was in the boot of the car, he’d looked at Bunting with curiosity at first, and then a kind of new-found respect – as much as a man like Blythe was capable of such a thing. Again Bunting was wary of flattering himself. He didn’t think Blythe saw him as anything like an equal. But he was interested: intrigued enough to leave him alive for the moment – and even to follow his lead in some ways. Bunting had explained what needed to be done, and Blythe had taken direction from him, doing as he was told in order to accomplish the tasks ahead of them. Then he had listened carefully as the pair of them sat here in the front room and Bunting had shown and told him. . .

  Well.

  Not everything. Just the parts of the story he needed to know.

  That story would be coming to an end soon. He was nearly there. On the home run, he thought. That was a good line, wasn’t it? The last couple of days had taught him he was full of them.

  With Blythe sleeping – for now – Bunting turned his attention to the laptop in front of him, and began to put the finishing touches to his life’s work.

  Thirty-Nine

  It was early afternoon when Emma and I parked up outside Jeremy Townsend’s house.

  With our encounter yesterday making the news, I was nervous that we might be met by a phalanx of journalists clamouring for some sidebar story to accompany the main coverage on Blythe. But the street was empty. Perhaps there was too much other excitement right now to bother with something as inconsequential as a man whose life had been ruined by it.

  Even so, the nerves remained. After the way I’d behaved, we were pushing our luck by coming here, and by mutual agreement we had decided not to mention this little excursion to Ferguson or Reeves. But as Emma pulled up by the kerb, any trouble I might get into with the department was of far less concern to me than getting to the heart of this and uncovering the truth. I could feel in my chest that we were close to doing so.

  ‘Ready?’ Emma said.

  ‘Yes. Ready.’

  ‘Not going to attack him again, are you?’

  I glanced at her, then returned the small smile sh
e was giving me.

  ‘Not making any promises,’ I said.

  We got out of the car. The afternoon was warm, with just the slightest of breezes, and it suited the street: a leafy residential road in a suburb to the west of the centre, close to the canal that Melanie West had walked home along every day until her disappearance. Townsend’s house was out of sight behind a high wall, with a concrete drive winding down. At the bottom, Emma and I were faced by an enormous old building, the huge bricks stained black. Stone steps led down beneath a couple of trees that seemed to be holding hands above. It was idyllic here. As quiet as the entire area was, Townsend’s house felt like a pocket of even deeper calm.

  Emma knocked on the door. I glanced at the floor above and saw a shadow appear behind one of the windows. The curtains moved slightly. He was home, at least. Whether he’d talk to us was another matter entirely. But after a moment, the shadow moved away from the window and I heard feet on the stairs, then finally Townsend opened the door.

  In our previous encounters, I’d gathered a number of impressions of him. In the first: nervous, furtive, guilty. And then yesterday, he’d seemed panicked and scared, as though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t – at least before the anger had surfaced anyway. All of it had made me deeply suspicious of him. But now that I thought I understood it all a little better, I could see the nerves and the guilt in a different light. Standing on his doorstep now, he seemed timid. He was almost shaking.

  And I felt enormously sorry for him.

  ‘Mr Townsend,’ I said. ‘First of all, I want to apologise for my behaviour yesterday.’

  He looked down and shook his head. ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘There’s every need. It was wrong of me. I was overemotional and too deeply involved in the investigation. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you.’

  ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘You really can’t.’

  ‘And in confidence, I have a connection with one of the other victims myself. It’s no excuse, but it’s there. We nearly caught Blythe yesterday, you see, and I was very upset that we didn’t. I still am.’