by Kate Ellis
The papers were yellowed with faint, uneven typing, but as Joe read through the statements and the postmortem reports he became lost in another world … in an Eborby that had existed long before he was born. A monochrome city of grime, of smoky chimneys, bomb damage and post-war austerity, largely undiscovered by the tourist masses. In the days before Eborby had been prettied up and polished to a sparkle there had still been dirt and grubby industry around the city centre. And there’d been grim slums, nests of festering deprivation and ugliness which had since been planned out of sight and banished to the likes of the Drifton Estate, well hidden from tourists’ camera lenses.
In 1954 when the first body was found, things like sex and death were only spoken of in euphemisms and hushed voices. Back then Singmass Close had been a dilapidated cluster of workmen’s cottages, crowded around the medieval chapel and a crumbling Georgian building known as the Ragged School, which had been used for the education and care of destitute children and orphans back in the early nineteenth century.
By the 1950s the children were long gone; at the time of the murders, the upper floors of the Ragged School were used for storage and the ground floor was a dolls’ hospital, where toys were brought for repair. Because of the dolls found with the bodies, the dolls’ hospital had been investigated but the proprietor, a man called Albert Jervis, had been ruled out as a suspect. According to the records, Jervis had solid alibis for three of the murders. Too solid perhaps. If Joe had been in charge of the case, maybe he would have checked them out more thoroughly.
The first victim was a nineteen-year-old shop assistant called Marion Grant. She had walked home alone from the cinema and her strangled body was found next morning down a narrow alley near the old Ragged School, a doll lying by her side. Marion’s big toe had been severed, just as Natalie Parkes’s had been. And the doll beside her had borne the same mutilation. Marion had argued with her boyfriend Peter Crawthwaite, a couple of days before but an unbreakable alibi meant he’d been eliminated from enquiries.
Several memos amongst the musty-smelling papers emphasised the importance of keeping the details of the mutilation confidential, certainly until a conviction had been secured. As the culprit had never been caught, those details had never been leaked. The chief investigating officer in those days – a man called Frazer – had obviously run a tight ship and, as far as Joe could see, nobody had broken the rules. The mutilations had never been made public.
The second victim was a typist called Valerie Seddon. A few weeks after the first murder she had been visiting her invalid aunt one evening, leaving just as darkness fell. She never arrived home and was found in a back snicket behind a row of houses in Singmass Close, again with a doll lying beside her. The big toe of her left foot had been neatly severed, as had the doll’s. Again the dolls’ hospital was investigated but nothing suspicious was ever found. Albert Jervis had claimed that the dolls hadn’t come from his premises but this had never been proved one way or the other.
Two more murders followed. Both victims had been strangled with a ligature just like the first two, something soft like a scarf or a stocking. And both had been mutilated. The third victim, Vera Jones, was a young barmaid coming home from her shift and the fourth, Doris Cray, was an assistant at a local bakery, walking home from a friend’s house. The police assumed that the killer had carried out the mutilations to obtain gruesome souvenirs of the crimes. But the purpose of the dolls, mutilated in exactly the same manner, had always remained a mystery.
Joe reread the papers and sat staring at the type until it swam before his eyes. Four deaths then the killings stopped suddenly. Perhaps because the Doll Strangler – as the press had come to call him – had moved from the area … or died. The sudden cessation had baffled the police back then. And as Joe read the files, it baffled him too.
‘Joe. A word when you’ve got a moment.’
He looked up and saw Emily disappearing into her office. She had just been to see the super and she didn’t look happy. He tidied the files on his desk and followed her into her office.
As he entered, she slumped down in her chair and looked up at him, attempting a smile which turned out more like a grimace of pain.
‘I’m making a public appeal tonight with Natalie’s brother. The super thinks it might jog memories but I think it’ll just bring all the weirdos in Yorkshire crawling out of the woodwork. Once some bright spark from the Eborby Argus latched onto the connection with the nineteen fifties murders, all hell broke loose in the press office.’
Joe sat down in the seat at the other side of her desk.
‘It’s just the kind of thing the press love to make a meal of.
Doll Strangler resurrected from the grave.’
‘I don’t suppose anything new has come in while I’ve been out?’
‘Not yet. But I’ve been going through the nineteen-fifties files.’
‘I’ve had a quick glance at them myself. If our friend’s intending to follow the pattern, we’ve got a lot to look forward to. I’ve asked uniform to increase patrols in the Singmass Close area.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘Bloody hell, Joe, I could do with a drink.’
‘You’ve got to go on TV exuding authority, boss.’
‘So maybe a bit of Dutch courage wouldn’t go amiss.’
She looked Joe in the eye and grinned. ‘But if that’s out of the question, it might help to go over what we’ve got so far.’
She scrabbled for a sheet of paper and a pen to jot down their thoughts. When she was ready, Joe began. ‘Natalie Parkes goes for an evening out with her friend, Karen Strange, to The Devil’s Playground. Nothing particularly bad known about the place apart from a few class B and C drugs being available on the premises. Natalie accidentally walks off with her friend’s handbag and Brett Bluit sees her talking to someone in a car belonging to Karen Strange’s mother. Karen herself spends the night with a bloke and she arrives home in blissful ignorance the next morning. Brett Bluit claims to have gone back into the club after seeing Natalie at the car and he says he went home soon after that – story confirmed by his doting mother who conveniently lay awake listening for him to come in.’
‘That figures.’
‘You reckon? He’s eighteen.’
Emily smirked. ‘It’s obvious you haven’t got kids, Joe.
I’ll be waiting up for mine till they’re in their forties.’ She stopped suddenly and Joe could tell she’d just remembered that Kaitlin had died before they’d had a chance to have children and she was cursing her tactlessness. He gave her a small, reassuring smile: the last thing he wanted was for her to feel that she had to tread on eggshells whenever they talked.
She moved on quickly. ‘Natalie’s body’s found in Singmass Close, near where the victims were found in the nineteen fifties. Identical MO … the ligature, the doll and the mutilations. Where the hell did that doll come from?
That’s what I want to know.’
Joe shook his head. ‘They never discovered the source of the dolls in the old murders. But reading the reports from the time, I started to wonder whether Albert Jervis who ran the dolls’ hospital in the old Ragged School was lying when he said he couldn’t tell whether any of his dolls were missing. But he had alibis for all the murders.’
‘Anyone else in the frame?’
‘Jervis had an assistant called Caleb Selly – bit of a loner but he had an unbreakable alibi for the first murder victim, Marion Grant. Caleb was visiting the house of Marion’s boyfriend, Peter Crawthwaite. They played in the local cricket team together. Crawthwaite’s dad was a magistrate. Selly stayed for a drink or two.’
‘I take it the magistrate was there?’
‘He was out at a function. It was just the son, Peter, who provided the alibi.’
‘Any other suspects.’
‘A few possibles but no probables. It was as if the killer disappeared into thin air. Nobody heard or saw anything.’
Emily looked up. ‘Sounds a bit like Jack the Ripper.’
/> ‘Only this one wasn’t kind enough to send the body parts to the police or leave writing on a wall near the scene of the crime. In fact he left no clues whatsoever. Even the dolls couldn’t be traced.’
‘He was playing games with the police by the sound of it.’
‘The question is, is this latest one doing the same?’
‘We’ll get him,’ Emily said confidently. ‘Our main problem is doing it before he has a chance to kill again.’
‘Want to come with me to see the Stranges?’ he asked, hoping the answer would be yes. She had a good ear for a lie.
‘Sorry, Joe, I’ve got this TV thing. Not that it’ll do much good.’
Joe smiled. ‘Stardom beckons then.’
The Doll Strangler was learning more about Natalie Parkes. It was in the paper. It was on the TV and radio. Natalie Parkes. The schoolgirl. The innocent victim. How they loved that image of violated purity.
But he’d also heard more worrying words: ‘Police are investigating the possibility that Natalie’s murder might be connected to a spate of killings back in the nineteen fifties and they would urge anyone with information to come forward.’
The police had remembered after all this time. But they didn’t know about him and they didn’t know about the children – the ones in his head who had tormented him and egged him on, poking and scratching at him if he prevaricated. Whispering in corners. Scratching with their long fingernails at the skirting boards.
There were still secrets they could never discover. The secrets of the grave.
As Joe sat down opposite Karen Strange’s father, Vince, he noticed that the man looked uneasy. Which was just as Joe had hoped.
‘Your wife told the officer who phoned earlier that you borrowed her Toyota on Friday night,’ Joe said, watching the man’s face carefully.
Vince nodded. ‘I went to the golf club. I was there all evening until around eleven. Ask anybody.’
‘We will, sir. If you can just tell me who you were with. Names and addresses if possible.’ Joe smiled and Vince edged back on his seat a few inches, backing away even though he had nowhere to go.
‘Did you know Natalie Parkes well?’ Joe asked after the names had been provided.
‘I hardly knew her at all. She was one of Karen’s friends, that’s all.’
‘What kind of a girl was she?’
Vince looked down at his hands. ‘Like I said, she was just Karen’s friend. She never talked to me apart from to say hello. What do you expect me to say?’
It was as if he was already being interrogated in the interview room. Guilt was sweating from every pore. Or was it guilt? Perhaps, Joe thought, it could be something else.
‘What about after that? Did you or your wife go out again in the Toyota after you’d returned from the golf club?’
‘No. We had a drink then we went to bed.’
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Not particularly. It’s always hard when they’re out … waiting to hear the key in the lock and all that.’
‘But Karen was supposed to be staying with Natalie.
You didn’t think she was coming back.’
The man looked flustered. ‘No, of course not. I forgot … sorry.’
‘Your car was caught on CCTV on the night of Natalie’s murder. And we have a witness who saw her talking to the driver.’
This time there was no mistaking it. Vince Strange looked scared.
‘Well, I wasn’t driving and neither was Barbara. Like I said, we were in bed. There must be some mistake.’
Joe stood up. ‘We’ll need to speak to you again, sir. And we’ll need to send someone over to examine the car,’ he said.
‘You won’t find anything,’ Strange said. For the first time during the interview he actually looked sure of himself.
‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Joe.
Michele could hear her footsteps echoing on the bare, splintery wood of the narrow staircase. Sylvia walked in front of her and the man was behind. She could hear his laboured breathing as though the effort of climbing the stairs was getting to him.
Her feeling of unease was growing again and she was starting to ask the questions she’d been crushing in her head as soon as they’d popped up. Why was there no sign of any models, clothes or make-up people? And why was it that she couldn’t quite envisage Barry wielding a camera?
They reached the landing – an enclosed space lined with closed doors, claustrophobic with its heavy brown wallpaper and dark varnished woodwork, and Michele felt a sudden desire to escape. But her way was blocked. There was no way out.
She could hear Barry wheezing behind her in the expectant silence as Sylvia began to lead the way again past the attic staircase and down a dim, narrow corridor. There was a single door at the end, well apart from the other upstairs rooms. Sylvia reached in her pocket for the key and when she had unlocked the door she turned the polished brass knob slowly and pushed it open.
Michele felt the blood pounding in her ears as Sylvia’s hand grabbed her elbow tightly. Then she was steered firmly towards the open door and all the illusions she had been nurturing began to fall away. Why had she been so stupid, so desperate? Why hadn’t she known right away that there would be no photo shoot, no modelling career? It was just a run-down house in the middle of nowhere and she’d been too blinkered to see the truth she didn’t want to see. And now she was trapped there like a frightened animal.
‘Alice.’ Sylvia’s tone was cajoling, as though she were talking to a child. ‘Alice, this is Michele. Say hello to Michele.’
Sylvia propelled her forward … forcing her to take a step into the unknown.
CHAPTER 7
They had Natalie Parkes’s phone and, according to common wisdom, a teenage girl’s mobile phone would give them everything they needed to know about her secret life. The numbers of all the people she didn’t want her family to know she was in the habit of calling would be entered into that phone. And one of those people could be her killer.
Once Joe had requested a detailed examination of the Stranges’ Toyota, he noticed the young DC, a lad who had shaved his head to hide the fact that his hair was thinning prematurely, studying the tiny pink phone and noting down names and numbers.
He perched on edge of the DC’s desk. ‘Any luck?’ he asked, nodding at the phone.
‘Most of them are just school friends but there’s one I haven’t managed to contact yet. It’s listed as “Stallion” and Natalie rung it on the night she died. The bad news is that it’s a pay-as-you-go phone so it’s untraceable.’
‘Keep trying the number,’ Joe said as he gave the young man’s back a token pat. A bit of encouragement in the face of adversity sometimes worked wonders … but it couldn’t make Stallion answer his phone and identify himself. That would take persistence and a bit of luck.
Emily was still out of her office. Sunny had told him that she’d gone off to the press conference, hair brushed and face freshly made up. She would be there now, sitting behind a desk with the press officer on one side and Will Parkes, the token grieving relative, on the other.
Joe was making for his desk, ready to go through the reports of the Singmass Close doll murders in the 1950s for the umpteenth time when he heard an excited voice calling, ‘Sir, he answered.’
Joe looked round. The shaven-headed DC was standing up now, his eyes aglow with triumph. ‘Who did?’
‘Stallion.’
‘Well?’
The triumphant look suddenly vanished. ‘He … er … said hello and when I said who I was, he rang off. I’ve tried since but the phone just goes onto voicemail. I’ve left a message to call me,’ he added with almost pathetic optimism.
Joe tried to muster a sympathetic smile but failed. He was young. He’d soon learn that not everyone relishes a cosy chat with a police officer.
Especially when, like Stallion, they probably had something to hide.
‘Keep trying,’ he said, glancing at his watch, wondering what time he
’d be able to get home that night.
It took a few seconds for Michele’s eyes to adjust to the dim light. The faded cotton curtains, heavily lined with blackout material, were drawn across so that only a few chinks of outside light escaped from the top where the rail met the wall. The only other light was provided by a dim 40-watt lamp on a cluttered table by the bed.
As she became accustomed to the gloom, she could make out a figure lying in the bed beneath an old-fashioned quilt. She stared at the head resting on the pillow; the toothless mouth gaping open and a cloud of grey hair spread out around the face like a halo. An old lady – hardly the monster conjured by her imagination.
She turned her head and saw that her captors were gazing down at the old woman with saccharin smiles fixed to their lips and the sight of them made her feel slightly sick. The woman in the bed looked completely helpless. Her body had given up and so, probably, had her mind. The only spark of life was in the watery grey eyes that watched her as she took a step further into the room.
Michele took in her surroundings. On the shelves that lined the far wall sat a dozen antique dolls with watchful eyes. Cold blue glass set in dainty porcelain faces of malevolent sweetness. They were mostly dressed in white – the picture of innocence – and their hair hung in ringlets around chubby pink-cheeked faces. They stared as Michele took another step into the room, their rosebud lips smirking as if to say that she was their prisoner. And there would be no escape. Ever.
Sylvia broke the silence. ‘This is Alice. You will make sure she’s clean and fed and you will change the bed as soon as it is wet or soiled. Do you understand?’
At first Michele didn’t realise that Sylvia was talking to her. But then she realised that the woman’s eyes were fixed on her, as though daring her to utter a word of defiance. It all made sense now: the nightclothes; the urine-scented sheets; the meals for four – Sylvia, Barry, Alice and herself. Nobody else. No photographers or lighting staff.
‘When you’ve dealt with Alice, you can make sure the house is clean. And you’ll cook all the meals. You’ve done well so far,’ Sylvia added.
