by Kate Ellis
‘It’s fact all right. The poor man died insane. The good citizens of Eborby used to go and gawp at him chained up in the asylum on Boothgate. That’s what passed for entertainment in those days. He ended up scratching his own eyes out, saying the children had done it. He raved on about the children pinching and scratching him … even claimed they tried to strangle him.’
‘What about the hauntings in the close?’
‘People reported seeing and hearing the ghosts of children around the close pretty soon after the event. And there was a resurgence of activity when the old buildings were cleared and the new development built. Ghosts get disturbed by change just like anyone else, I suppose.’
George’s words reminded him that Philip Derby had said something similar.
‘The Ragged School’s being renovated.’
‘So I’ve heard. It’s being made into offices, I believe.’
‘Do you think there’s anything in the stories?’
George shrugged. ‘I try to keep an open mind about these things until I’m convinced otherwise.’ There was a pause then he looked Joe in the eye. ‘As a matter of fact a young woman from Singmass Close came to see me quite recently. Her daughter had started chatting away to a little girl called Mary. An invisible little girl of course.’ He smiled. ‘I said it could just be an imaginary friend. They’re quite common at that age – my nephew had one called Marmaduke. I don’t know where he got that from. Mary seems quite mundane by comparison.’
‘So what happened?’
‘I told her I’d come and visit the child if she was still worried but I didn’t hear from her again.’
‘When was this?’
‘It must be about three weeks ago.’
Joe could feel his heart beating a little faster. ‘Was her name Polly Myers?’
‘Yes. Do you know her?’
‘I’ve met her,’ he said, wondering whether to mention Polly’s resemblance to Kaitlin. But he thought better of it. ‘Where were the children’s bodies buried?’
‘In the churchyard of St Andrews, I believe … the nearest parish church. I think there’s a little memorial to them but I must admit, I haven’t actually been there to have a look. There’s a common belief that some of the bodies were never found.’ He paused. ‘I’ve thought from time to time that I should go and pray there … try and put their poor little souls to rest.’
Joe smiled. It was just like George to concern himself with the welfare of ghosts. ‘I presume you know about the murders in Singmass Close in the nineteen fifties?’
‘Ah, yes. I read about it in the paper. The Doll Strangler. You think he’s resumed his nasty little tricks? All I can say is that he’s taken his time to get going again.’
‘We think it might be a copycat killer. The only trouble is he knows too much. Certain things were kept from the public in the fifties but our killer seems to know all about them.’
‘Oh dear.’ George rested his chin on his hands. ‘You’re quite sure the details weren’t published?’
‘Absolutely sure. We’ve been through every press report as well as all the true crime books on the subject. This particular thing isn’t mentioned.’
‘Then your killer might have come out of retirement and struck again. If he was in his late teens then he could be a sprightly septuagenarian now.’ He paused. ‘Or it might be someone who was involved in the case at the time. A police officer or someone who found one of the bodies. Or the son of someone involved … someone whose mother or father told them everything they knew.’
‘The details of these particular murders aren’t the sort of thing you’d tell your kids as a bedtime story. Are dolls associated with the Singmass Close hauntings?’
‘Children have dolls so I suppose that’s a connection of sorts. Sorry, Joe, I’m not being much help, am I?’
‘On the contrary, George. It’s good to talk it over with someone who isn’t involved.’
‘I’ll pray for these girls and their families.’
‘Thanks, George,’ said Joe softly.
As he took his leave and walked out into the massive space of the cathedral’s nave, he realised that, although he hadn’t actually discussed the case with George, everything seemed clearer in his head.
However, he didn’t quite know what to make of George’s revelation that Polly Myers had consulted him about an imaginary child called Mary. Surely it was unlikely to have anything to do with the murders. Perhaps, he told himself, he was just clutching at any excuse to see Polly again. Perhaps Maddy’s extended absence was responsible for this growing obsession. He kept checking to see if he’d missed a call from her on his mobile and each time he found nothing he felt a stab of disappointment. He had only spoken to her last night and she was probably busy … as he was.
George’s remark about the killer being a sprightly septuagenarian had set him thinking. Peter Crawthwaite, the boyfriend of the first victim back in the 1950s, would be in his early seventies and he lived nearby in the almshouses on Boothgate. He’d been planning to see him but the murder of Abigail Emson had got in the way. Now he wanted to see Crawthwaite sooner rather than later. He wanted to speak to someone who was there back in the 1950s.
Michele was keeping her head down, always on the look out for a potential escape route. But in the meantime she was careful to do as she was told and not ask questions. The girl in the freezer had probably asked questions.
She spooned the soup gently into Alice’s mouth. She had seen the empty capsules before, lying on the draining board, but she hadn’t realised their significance until that morning. What if Alice’s soup was being drugged? What if she wasn’t as helpless as she seemed?
As an experiment, Michele had thrown away the soup Sylvia had left on Alice’s tray and replaced it with some from the pan on the stove. Her only fear was Sylvia finding out what she’d done. Or the visitor she hadn’t yet seen. He was an unknown quantity.
Alice certainly seemed brighter that morning. She managed to lift her head slightly and attempt a smile which made Michele suspect that there might be something in her suspicions that Alice’s food had been drugged, just as her own coffee had been when she first arrived.
As she picked up the tray and stood up to leave the room, Alice made a sound, a low grunt as though she was trying to speak. Michele put the tray down and rushed to the side of the bed.
‘What is it, Alice? Do you want to tell me something?’ she whispered.
‘Dolls …’ The word was unclear but Michele could just about make it out.
There was a sound from outside on the landing. ‘Sssh, now Alice. Don’t say anything else. I’ll come back later. OK?’
Alice’s arm went up to grab Michele’s sleeve but Michele managed to escape her feeble grasp. ‘I’ll be back. Keep quiet. OK?’
Michele hurried out of the room, shutting the door carefully behind her and turning the key in the lock as Sylvia had instructed her to do. It wouldn’t do to let Alice wander out. Not now she’d started to communicate.
Michele was carrying the tray downstairs when she saw a movement in the hall. A tall, lean man with thinning dark hair was walking towards the living room and she froze, praying he wouldn’t look up and see her. She watched as he disappeared through the living-room door. He must be the visitor, she thought. The unseen fifth person.
And something about his face seemed vaguely familiar.
CHAPTER 13
Emily sounded uncharacteristically subdued when Joe called her to say he was paying Philip Derby another visit. She was still waiting for a call from Greater Manchester Police to tell her that Abigail Emson’s next of kin had been informed. Even an encounter with Derby seemed preferable to that, Joe thought to himself as he walked to Derby’s flat.
He found the author at home and noted the man’s smug expression as he answered the door. Joe stepped into the flat, determined to wipe the knowing smile off his face. He was in no mood for pleasantries this time.
‘You lied to me, Mr Derby
.’
‘Philip, please.’ He was trying his best to keep up the act of nonchalance but Joe had seen a flicker of panic in his eyes, swiftly suppressed.
‘You told me you knew nothing about the Doll Strangler murders in the nineteen fifties?’
‘Did I say that?’ Derby examined his fingernails, before looking up at him and smiling. ‘Look, if you think I killed this Natalie girl, you’re barking up the wrong tree entirely.’
‘You wrote a book about famous Eborby murders, including the Doll Strangler. You researched all the details. Natalie Parkes’s murder was a copycat killing … by someone who knows all about the originals.’
The smile stayed fixed on Derby’s lips as he shook his head. ‘Oh, dear, Inspector, you are clutching at straws. Thousands of people knew about those murders. It was hardly a state secret.’
‘So why lie about it?’
The answer was an amused shrug. This man was treating it almost as a joke and Joe had to resist the temptation to punch the smirk off his face or arrest him on the spot. He wasn’t sure what for, but he was certain he could think of something.
‘Can anybody vouch for your whereabouts in the early hours of last Saturday morning?’ he asked formally.
Derby’s pale cheeks reddened. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.
I was with a friend but I wouldn’t want to …’
Joe watched him realising that he was actually enjoying the man’s embarrassment. ‘We’ll need a name. And an address. We’ll have to check.’
‘It could be embarrassing for the friend I was with. You see …’
‘His name … sir?’
‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘It’s Ben Cassidy.’ He recited an address off Andrewgate … around 200 yards from Singmass Close as the crow flies. ‘Look, he’s a headmaster. If it got out that he …’
Benjamin Cassidy. Of course. The head of Hicklethorpe Manor. This case was getting odder by the moment.
‘You were at Mr Cassidy’s house?’
‘Yes,’ was the whispered reply.
‘What time did you leave?’
Derby swallowed hard. ‘About four in the morning.’
‘You’ve known Mr Cassidy long?’
The man’s face turned red. ‘Not long. And I’ve not seen him since that night.’
‘Where were you last night, Mr Derby? Between eleven, say, and one in the morning.’
‘Why?’
‘There was another murder last night. Identical to the first.’
Derby’s mouth fell open. In Joe’s experience it was hard to fake that sort of shock. But not impossible. ‘Where were you?’
‘I was here. I had a quiet night in reading and listening to music. I went to bed around eleven-thirty. No witnesses, I’m afraid.’
‘You didn’t go out at all?’
Derby shook his head. A muscle in his eye twitched, making it look as if he was winking. The casual manner was an act. He was on edge. Joe could almost smell his fear.
‘When you wrote your book about famous Eborby murders, is there anything you decided to leave out … any information about the Doll Strangler murders you got from a police officer who worked on the case, for instance? Something that had been kept from the public at the time?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Joe looked round the room and noticed, not for the first time, that Derby possessed an LCD TV with a DVD recorder underneath. They squatted there, matt silver and uncompromisingly modern, amongst the old books and shabby antiques like spacecraft descended into a drab 1950s landscape. There was a collection of DVDs too that caught Joe’s eye … not commercial but home-recorded.
‘Do you have any notes you made for the book? Research?’
Derby looked wary and nodded.
‘Mind if I have a look?’
It was difficult to read Derby’s expression but Joe guessed he was alarmed. He hurried from the room, leaving Joe alone.
When Joe left twenty minutes later, having examined the notes Derby had chosen to show him and found no reference to severed toes, he had a DVD tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket. Technically, he had done the wrong thing, of course. But then there were two young women lying dead in the mortuary of Eborby General and he needed some answers. Fast.
Emily sat with her head bowed. She needed a few moments away from the bustle of the incident room to collect her thoughts. She had just spoken to Greater Manchester Police who had sent someone to break the news to Abigail Emson’s parents. An officer had arrived on the doorstep of the unsuspecting couple who’d been preparing for just another ordinary day, unaware that their world was about to be blown apart. What if, in fifteen or so years time, it was one of her own kids? The thought was far too painful to contemplate and she tried to push it from her mind. But it kept returning like a nightmare.
She was glad when Joe entered the office, distracting her from her morbid thoughts. He looked excited, as though he had made some new discovery. She just hoped it was a good one. She needed cheering up.
‘I’ve just seen Philip Derby. You’ll never guess who he says he was with on the night of Natalie Parkes’s murder.’
‘Surprise me,’ said Emily with a sigh.
‘He claims he was with Natalie’s headmaster. Benjamin Cassidy.’
‘Does he indeed?’ She hadn’t liked Cassidy much and somehow she wasn’t surprised that his name had come up. Call it a hunch or female intuition – she wasn’t sure which.
‘So Cassidy’s his boyfriend, is he?’
‘Well, he didn’t go into detail about their exact relationship but …’
Before Joe could say more, Jamilla Dal gave a perfunctory knock on the office door and burst in.
‘Natalie Parkes’s mother’s here, sir. She’s at the front desk.’
Emily looked at Joe. ‘She took her time.’ She knew the French police had had trouble tracking her down but she still had an irrational feeling that a mother should have known somehow that she’d lost a daughter in appalling circumstances.
Five minutes later she and Joe were face to face with Tricia Parkes. She recognised one of the men with her as Natalie’s brother, Will, who stood by his mother’s side protectively. With them was a slim, dark-haired man dressed with casual good taste who hung back slightly behind the pair as though he didn’t know quite what to do. This, Joe assumed, was Thierry. And the Frenchman looked around awkwardly as Tricia sobbed theatrically into a disintegrating tissue.
Emily put her arm around the woman and led her firmly but gently into the interview room, hissing to a passing constable that tea was needed. Hot and strong. Two sugars. Will, Thierry and Joe followed, heads bowed like mourners.
Between sobs Tricia told them that she knew nothing about her daughter’s love life: Natalie had been entitled to her privacy like everyone else. Emily suspected that this was due to a lack of interest rather than consideration for her daughter’s feelings but she said nothing.
However, Tricia did come up with one juicy nugget of information. She thought that Natalie was involved with an older man but she had no solid evidence – just a feeling.
Natalie’s room had, of course, already been searched but no clue to any man friend’s identity had been found and Stallion still wasn’t answering his phone. Even Karen Strange, the so-called best friend, hadn’t known – or had claimed that she hadn’t known. The mystery man or men in Natalie Parkes’s life was remaining just that – a mystery.
The Doll Strangler sat with a blanket across his knees, his fading eyes squinting to read the local newspaper headlines in the light seeping through the thin, floral curtains. His gnarled hands felt for the glass of water. He had to take his pills. How these doctors loved to keep you alive … but that was their job. They saved life as readily as he had taken it.
It had just been on the radio. There’d been another one. She’d been found in the close again, just like before. Just like his girls. He remembered the click, click, click of their high heels on the paving slabs an
d the children’s whispers. ‘Here she comes. She’s getting nearer.’
This one was called Abigail. It was a pretty name and he knew she would have been pretty like the others. It was the pretty girls who laughed at you. But, after he’d stopped the laughter, they had lain there like dolls. His playthings. It had been so many years ago and now he wanted to see his souvenirs again so badly.
The 1950s had been good years. Everyone full of hope after the War. The girls used to more freedom than they had enjoyed before the days of the War with its ever-present possibility of death. The girls had danced back then – jived and jitterbugged with the soldiers and the Yanks. But they’d never wanted to dance with him so one day he’d decided to stop them dancing altogether. The children nobody else could see had dared him to do it. They had taunted and teased until he had showed them he had the guts to act.
His first attempt at killing had failed miserably and the children had chanted and called him names. But after that, he’d gathered the courage to prove himself and he’d wielded real power for the first time in his life. The power of life and death.
He needed to look at his keepsakes. But it was so difficult to get at them up there in the attic. It needed some thought. Some planning.
He reached out for his frame. If he could manage the stairs and get the ladder down, then he could relive it all again. He could feel the life coursing through his body once more.
But when he heard the key turn in the front door he knew that it was too late now for pleasure. Pleasure would have to wait until another time.
Joe left Emily to deal with Tricia Parkes. He had things to do. And top of his list was checking out Philip Derby’s alibi and seeing what was on the DVD he’d taken from his flat.
He’d just sat down when Jenny Ripon came rushing up. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked as if she was bursting to impart some thrilling secret. ‘I’ve been checking out some names, sir. People who’ve given statements.’
He looked up at her, curious. ‘And?’
‘Well, according to official records there’s no such person as Polly Myers. She even gave false details to the shop where she’s been working. Polly Myers doesn’t exist.’
