Pretty Little Things

by T. M. E. Walsh

  He pauses, and I guess he doesn’t know whether to ignore it or not.

  He chooses not to.

  ‘Tell me these aren’t yours, Charlotte?’ he says, genuine upset in his voice. He leans down and picks them up.

  In a strange way, I wish they were.

  ‘They’re Iain’s,’ I say, and I’m embarrassed. Iain can drive me crazy sometimes, but I do love him and want to protect him from any narrow-mindedness.

  John scrutinises the packet. I see he checks to make sure they are in fact Iain’s and not mine. He hands the packet back to me. I lean down, shove the box back in my bag, zipping it up quickly.

  ‘How long’s he been medicated?’ he says, easing himself away from me.

  And, you know what? I’m angry, because what the hell has it got to do with him, and why say it in such a way that makes it sound like there’s something seriously wrong with my husband?

  I fight to keep the anger from my voice.

  ‘You make it sound like something sordid.’

  He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t mean to, it’s just I know, from experience with Beth, that these pills can be addictive. You also shouldn’t be driving while taking them.’

  Wow, I guess he’s going to go there. ‘He’s had them before, I’m sure his body is used to them in that respect.’

  ‘Had them before?’

  I nod. ‘After the accident. He struggled to cope.’

  ‘He couldn’t cope? How’d he suppose you were feeling then?’ He folds his arms across his torso. ‘Because I remember how it was, even if you were too spaced-out on painkillers to understand. Is that why he stayed away, while I came and sat by your side each day, stayed overnight a few times too?’

  He looks away, avoids my eyes. He shakes his head, more to himself, and in that moment it’s as if I’m not there. ‘He couldn’t cope . . . Wow, unbelievable,’ he is saying to himself.

  I look at John now, and don’t know how I feel, because part of what he says is true and makes me think. Iain wasn’t there, not really. John was, true, but I feel disloyal, especially when Iain’s not here to defend himself.

  ‘Stop it.’ The words slip out before I can stop them.

  John looks at me now but I can’t read what he’s thinking.

  ‘I just want my life back to normal.’ I hear my voice crack as the words leave my mouth. I look away, let the tears fall, not caring if anyone sees.

  John moves in again, this time his hand going to mine.

  ‘This is why we need to talk about it, keep it fresh in our minds. We have to be ready. Have you spoken to your solicitor?’

  I feel the strain of having to relive it all begin to build, made worse in part by John’s constant need to talk about it.

  Yet, I know we have to.

  I owe John a lot. He was there that day but he also knows what really happened.

  When Paul Selby goes to court, his defence will claim it was in fact me who caused the accident.

  I still don’t remember why I was on the Linkway at that time in the afternoon. I know the weather was fine, visibility good.

  I wasn’t on my mobile, and my phone records can come under as close a scrutiny as they like – it will only prove me right.

  I hadn’t had a drink – no alcohol was found in my body. The car hadn’t long since had its MOT and passed.

  There are no cameras on that stretch of road, but I wasn’t speeding, not really. I know the defence will argue that I was picked up on a camera, about a mile before the Linkway, doing five miles over the speed limit, but I wasn’t driving erratically.

  The crash-scene investigators are reviewing all the evidence, but we all know, and he’s admitted it – Paul Selby was using his mobile while driving.

  He also claims, however, that, despite this aggravating factor, it was in fact me who was in his lane as we both came round that dangerous bend.

  I can’t lie in court. I honestly cannot remember – not yet anyway. Doctors are confident that it will return to me at some point. They can’t say when, of course, but I know I would never drive so dangerously.

  The only other witness to the crash is John.

  He confirms what I already know in my heart to be true. Paul Selby lost control on that bend because he was distracted by his phone.

  There has been such a rise in drivers – HGV drivers in particular – using a mobile at the wheel and causing serious accidents and even deaths as a result.

  He’s going to have the book thrown at him.

  It’s only because his previous good character was taken into account that he wasn’t kept on remand.

  This is why I am dependent on John Hague. I have faith that the evidence will prove me free of all wrongdoing but it helps to have John’s testimony. It eliminates that small element of doubt for the jury.

  ‘Have I spoken to my solicitor?’ I repeat aloud. ‘Not lately.’

  ‘Wonder what’s got Ruby spooked?’ he says, finishing his coffee.

  ‘Spooked?’

  ‘Yeah. I mean something’s gone on, hasn’t it? She’s gradually got worse.’ He drums his fingers on the table top in a staccato beat. ‘Why the blood?’

  I shrug. ‘Who knows. I mean, you can’t reason with crazy. Who knows what’s going on in her head?’

  A look crosses John’s face.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I heard Selby tried to kill himself.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said on the phone that Ruby said you had blood on your hands?’

  ‘Yeah, or something like that. She didn’t really give an explanation to the police other than to say I was ruining Paul’s life. He’s been suspended from the haulage company he works for.’

  John nods. ‘One of my neighbours, he works with Selby. He said there was an ambulance at the house Friday night.’

  ‘You think Ruby blames me for that too?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  I think about it and know she must. ‘Well, she blames me for everything else that’s gone wrong for them in the last six months. She may as well add “reason for attempted suicide” to the list,’ I say with a wry smile.

  He taps his fingers on the table. ‘Are you going to cancel the fete?’

  I roll my eyes.

  He laughs. ‘That’s not the first time you’ve been asked that since yesterday, is it?’

  ‘Since before yesterday, actually.’ I pause, pick at the cake again. ‘Since the girls were found.’ I look at him. ‘I was worried it might look insensitive to go ahead with it.’

  He nods. ‘What has Ruth said?’

  ‘She wants us to go ahead with it, to honour the girls’ memory.’

  ‘As a show of strength?’

  ‘Yes, but Iain thinks I should cancel it. We’re already postponing Elle’s birthday party, but obviously that’s different to the fete.’

  John’s stare is intense. I feel my cheeks colour and I feel I need to fill the silence with words. I get like that when I’m nervous.

  ‘Um, Iain,’ I say, and wince when I hear my voice rise a notch. ‘. . . He says Ruby’s unpredictable and might try and sabotage things too. He thinks that’s reason enough to cancel.’

  He nods. ‘It’s a fair point, though.’

  ‘But if I cancel, it’s letting her win. I don’t want her to think she can intimidate me. I know I’ve had a setback with the accident. It was something I couldn’t control, but I can control this,’ I say, and I can feel the fight in me rearing up.

  ‘Why’s it so important to you?’

  I sit back and take him in.

  I shake my head. ‘You could say that about a lot of things. Why do people set up crowdfunding pages for families and victims? I just feel it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘It won’t bring those girls back.’

  ‘Nothing is going to bring those girls back, I know that, but I know what it’s like to lose a . . .’ I hold back on saying the word child.

  John is frowning a
t me.

  He doesn’t know about Miles. Not many people do. I prefer it that way. I can’t deal with the questions people would naturally ask.

  John looks at me expectantly.

  ‘I know what it’s like to lose someone close.’

  ‘A lot of people know that feeling . . . or will in time,’ he says.

  It’s almost patronising.

  ‘I just can’t sit and do nothing. Not when it’s happening on all our doorsteps.’

  He nods slowly and drums his fingers on the table again. ‘What does Savannah say?’

  Savannah.

  This is the first time he’s mentioned her name in some time. He looks awkward bringing her up.

  I shrug. ‘She’s happy to go ahead with it.’

  ‘She didn’t say to call it off?’

  ‘She has her reservations, but no, she’s with me on this.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Why?’

  He smiles at me and stops drumming his fingers on the table. ‘No reason.’

  My phone pings, indicating a text has come through. John passes it to me from the middle of the table where I’d left it.

  ‘It’s Elle,’ I say. ‘Just letting me know she’s now on her way to her first lesson.’

  John waits patiently while I tap out a reply. I set the phone back down on the table.

  ‘You mentioned she got a lift in today, but other than that how’s she doing?’ he says. ‘She’s a beautiful girl, Charlotte. You’re very lucky.’

  I smile and nod. ‘She’s OK. Well, as OK as she can be right now. As I said, yesterday was a shock, but I wanted her to carry on as usual, as much as possible.’

  ‘You mentioned her party . . . big birthday coming up soon.’

  ‘Yeah, I can’t quite believe I almost have a seventeen-year-old.’

  He smiles. ‘I want time to slow with my two, they’re growing up too fast.’

  ‘It must be tough not being able to see them that often any more.’

  His face is fixed and I cannot read it. I hope I’ve not overstepped the mark.

  ‘Can I get Elle something for her birthday?’ he says, steering the conversation away from his own kids.

  ‘Oh,’ I say and drain the last of my coffee. This is awkward. ‘Please don’t feel you have to.’

  ‘I want to. She’s been through enough. She deserves something nice.’

  I hold his gaze. ‘Well, that’s very kind of you. I’ll have to let you know.’

  I see the woman on the table next to us has opened her newspaper and I can just about make out the latest news on the murdered teens, and the missing girl.

  I gesture towards it. ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’

  John glances at the paper, then his eyes are back on mine. ‘I’ve been thinking about them a lot. Obviously, Caroline more than the rest. I don’t really know Ruth well but I’d seen her around the hospital. She seems nice.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘I went out looking for Caroline and the others.’

  I can’t hide the look on my face.

  He leans in closer. ‘You think that’s weird?’

  ‘No,’ I say, a little too quickly. ‘I looked for Caroline too.’

  ‘But?’ He pauses a beat. ‘You think I’m excited by all the buzz around the villages?’

  I stir a spoon around my cup, despite its being empty, trying to think my answer through. ‘It’s hard not to overthink everything,’ I say. ‘We’ve had journalists in the shop, so it’s natural everyone has a vested interest, I guess.’

  ‘We need to protect our kids, Charlotte.’

  I look at him. Is he expecting me to add more?

  ‘Makes me glad I had boys,’ he says.

  I make myself smile.

  ‘Not that I get to see them much.’

  My smile drops.

  I can almost see the sadness coming off him in waves. ‘Can’t you take Beth to court for joint custody or something?’

  I see the glint of anger in his eyes at the mention of her name, but when his eyes flick back to look into mine, it begins to dim a little.

  ‘I’ll get us another coffee before you head back for work.’

  He leaves the table before I can say anything.

  I get a sudden jolt, a flashback to being in the wreck of my car. I can hear the flames crackling, edging closer to the fuel pipe.

  There’s a saying about not playing with fire.

  How well do I really know John?

  I was very literally nearly burned once. You’d think I’d have learned to be more cautious by now.

  CHAPTER 17

  ‘The results of the postmortem have just come back for victim number three, Melissa Scott, and number four, Katie Allen,’ Madeleine said as she stood at the front of the incident room.

  The room fell silent and all eyes were on her.

  ‘Melissa Scott, same cause of death as the other two.’

  A few murmurs rose in the room. Melissa Scott was one of the youngest, along with Katie Allen; they were just fifteen.

  ‘Katie Allen, it seems, died from an asthma attack. She’d had her throat cut postmortem.’

  ‘Any ideas about the asthma attack? Could it have been brought on by what was happening?’ Alex said.

  ‘That’s very likely. Something else we have to go on,’ Madeleine said. ‘Inventories of what each girl was wearing and had in their possession at the time they went missing were given to us by the girls’ parents.’ She gave Charis a series of printouts to pass around.

  ‘Caroline was wearing gold-star stud earrings. Only one was present in her earlobe. Juliet was wearing three rings. We’ve only recovered two that were still on her right hand.’

  She paused, eyes scanning the list.

  ‘Melissa was wearing a silver hallmarked bracelet charm in the design of a skull. It was missing from her Pandora bracelet, which we did recover, and Katie always had her asthma inhaler on her. All items now missing.’

  She let the information sink in.

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Charis said. ‘They got lost or the killer has them?’

  Madeleine looked solemn. ‘I think the killer has deliberately taken them.’

  ‘Kept hold of them, you mean?’ Alex said.

  Madeleine nodded. ‘Like trophies,’ she said. ‘I believe our killer likes to take trophies from his victims.’

  A collective silence fell over the room.

  ‘Shit,’ Charis said after several seconds.

  ‘Do you think we should release this information to the media?’ Alex this time.

  ‘If we go public with this, circulated pictures, someone may have noticed these missing things on someone they know,’ Charis said.

  ‘You’re assuming the killer is showing these things off,’ DS Hicks said.

  Madeleine stepped in then. ‘What do we know about killers who take trophies? They tend to hide them. They are usually purely for the killer, for their private collection. When they want to reminisce, they get them out to look at what they’ve taken. It makes them feel close to their victim. It’s something for them to remember them by, remember the kill, what it was like, relive the thrill that it originally gave them.’

  Charis nodded. ‘It’s been known for killers to give items they’ve stolen to people as presents. To family members, for instance.’

  ‘It’s all about control,’ Madeleine said. ‘We have photographs of the girls wearing some of these items; for those we don’t, like the asthma inhaler, we can use generic images that are like-for-like. Alex, have these circulated to the media, please. Where are we on the van mentioned?’

  Charis shook her head. ‘Nothing yet. We’ve got hours and hours of footage to go through from CCTV and traffic cameras.’

  ‘OK, make that a priority. Also start looking at hire-car companies, any long-term hires, that kind of thing.’ Madeleine checked her notes. ‘Some lab results have come back from the PM on Caroline White and Juliet Edwards. It’s possible the flora found under their nai
ls and in their hair is from a wildflower called Silene dioica, more commonly known as red campion. It’s a pink or pink-red flower and is found carpeting damp woodland and paths, stream banks, ditches, in the shade of hedgerows, meadows and gardens, flowering between May and September.’

  Alex frowned. ‘That’s a lot of places. What with all the surrounding villages and forestry and woodland? That’s a lot of ground to cover.’

  ‘Best we get locating potential areas where the flowers grow then.’

  She pinned a photograph of the flower on the main board.

  ‘I want to talk more about what motivates this killer,’ Madeleine continued. ‘Why these girls, why this location, why kill them? None were sexually assaulted, so what’s behind this?’

  ‘The killer’s targeting young girls,’ Hicks said. ‘Maybe that’s the fantasy, the thrill, young bodies.’

  ‘But why start killing now?’ Madeleine said. ‘Something’s triggered this killer to go from what? Zero to sixty in a matter of weeks? Usually serial killers will start small, and escalate, try things out and adapt and improve. Nothing flags up in the last few years as being even remotely similar. This killer is different.’

  ‘Here’s a scary thought,’ Alex said, snapping his fingers. ‘What if there is no reason?’

  ‘None at all, not even in its smallest measure?’ Charis said, scepticism in her voice.

  Alex shrugged. ‘Why not? What if he does this just because he can?’

  ‘Now that is scary,’ Hicks said.

  Madeleine had to concede, Alex had a fair point. Killers like that were rare, but not unheard of.

  ‘Let’s look at what we know,’ Madeleine said. ‘The killer has to know the area well, which is why there’s little CCTV footage or witnesses of any kind. We have reports of a white van being seen in the area when the girls went missing. Have we looked at similar vehicles used by people in the local area?’

  ‘Yes,’ Charis said. ‘Nothing yet.’

  ‘The killer is killing these girls quickly, so they have limited resources, as discussed before. It all seems to boil down to an insatiable bloodlust. What about strength? All the girls taken were slender to average build, certainly not strong or heavy, so they were easy pickings for this killer. That tells us he doesn’t want too much of a challenge.’