Playing with Bones

by Kate Ellis

  As he washed up his dinner plate, her name kept going through his head. Alice Meadows might have seen the murderer. Alice Meadows might hold the key to the whole thing.

  Slowly. That was the way to do it. The Doll Strangler heaved his useless body up the stairs, step by step, resting at regular intervals to regain his breath.

  Reaching the attic was too much effort so he’d decided to leave it until he felt stronger. But he knew the diary was hidden in a space underneath the airing cupboard in the spare room. It was a thin exercise book crammed with close writing and graphic, detailed drawings he’d made while the memory was still fresh. They’d wanted him to have central heating put in but he’d said no. He couldn’t take the risk of it being found by some curious workman. It was his secret.

  In the days of his marriage he had kept the diary and the souvenirs in secret places where he knew she would never look. He knew he should have got rid of them but that would have been like getting rid of beloved children. Those memories were his real, darker self. They were what set him apart from other, more ordinary men.

  From time to time over the years he’d taken the diary from its hiding place to read it and experience again that thrill of ultimate power. He didn’t do it often, only keeping it as a special treat … or when he felt he had to relive the pleasure of destruction.

  Slowly he made his way up to the spare room. Thump, thump on the bare staircase. The stairway to ecstasy.

  CHAPTER 16

  Early the next morning Joe left his flat to walk to the police station. It had been raining overnight and the grey stone flags were glistening in the weak Yorkshire sun. As he passed Singmass Close he nodded to the unfortunate constable who’d been given the job of guarding the crime scene. Then he retraced his steps and asked him whether he’d seen anybody at number six that morning. But the answer was no. Polly – or whatever her real name was – was still away.

  He arrived at the station just as the sun had hidden itself behind the thickening clouds and as he climbed the stairs to the incident room he found himself yawning. He hadn’t slept well and, besides, he’d been too excited about last night’s discovery to relax. He’d almost rung Emily there and then at eleven at night to tell her about Alice Meadows, but he’d resisted the temptation. There was nothing he could have done till morning anyway.

  He found Emily at her desk. She looked settled, as if she’d been there all night. When he opened her office door she looked up. ‘You look bloody awful,’ were her first words.

  Joe slumped down on the chair by her desk. ‘I was up reading the files on the nineteen-fifties murders last night.’ He leaned forward. ‘I discovered that the killer had had a go a year before he murdered Marion Grant. He attacked a young mother in Singmass Close and hacked off her big toe. She survived.’

  Emily gave a low whistle. ‘Why didn’t we find this out before?’

  ‘I don’t know if they made the connection back then.’

  She muttered something disparaging under her breath. ‘Any sign of a doll in the attack?’

  Joe shook his head. ‘Perhaps he struck on the idea of the dolls later on. The attack on Alice Meadows might have been some kind of rehearsal.’

  ‘Alice Meadows? Any idea if she’s still alive?’

  ‘I’m getting the team to trace her. They say old people sometimes remember more about what happened fifty years ago than what they did yesterday.’

  Emily gave him a wicked grin. ‘Was that an ageist stereotype I heard then? Go and wash your mouth out. Which reminds me, we’re seeing Albert Jervis later this morning.’ She glanced out of the office window. ‘Not a very nice day for a trip to Whitby but beggars can’t be choosers.’ She grinned again. ‘And Weightwatchers can bugger off today. It’s ages since I’ve had Whitby fish and chips and I need the energy.’

  Joe left her alone in her office, salivating over the culinary treats awaiting them on the coast. Police work had to have some compensations.

  Soon after Emily’s morning briefing, Jenny Ripon came up with the news that a widowed woman called Alice Meadows, who was around the right age, lived in a sprawling village that lay between Eborby and Harrogate.

  Joe felt a glow of satisfaction. He hadn’t expected it to be this easy. Wasting no time, he bagged himself a pool car and drove out alone to the house. It was a Victorian semi, built of mellow old bricks with creeper climbing the walls. But the sight of a skip in the trampled front garden and a demolished for sale sign lying just behind the garden wall gave him the nasty feeling that he’d arrived too late.

  The young woman who answered the door told him they’d bought the house from Mrs Meadows around three months ago. Mrs Meadows had had some sort of stroke and had gone to live with her daughter but the new occupiers didn’t have a forwarding address for her. It looked as though Joe had hit a dead end.

  But Joe wasn’t one to give up easily. The neighbour’s house looked promising with its green paintwork and fancy net curtains at the windows. It had the look of a house that had been occupied by the same family for years so he tried his luck.

  During house-to-house enquiries, Joe had often noticed how the older generation are far more au fait with the lives of those around them than their younger counterparts. And at the house with green paintwork he struck lucky. A retired couple in their late sixties had lived there for thirty years and they seemed all too eager to give chapter and verse on Alice Meadows.

  They had known Alice quite well, although she usually kept herself to herself. After her stroke she’d gone to live with her daughter and son-in-law somewhere out in the country on the way to Pickering. An isolated spot, so they’d heard, which had surprised them because Alice’s daughter, Sylvia, had been a spoiled girl who’d loved expensive shops and fashion and she’d never been one to get her hands dirty. The harsh judgement was that Sylvia was only looking after her mother to avoid using her money to pay for a nursing home. But when Joe asked for Alice’s new address, his luck ran out. Sylvia wasn’t one to encourage visits so she hadn’t made the effort to let anyone know and Alice hadn’t been in any fit state to provide a forwarding address herself.

  Joe was about to leave when the lady of the house spoke again.

  ‘I doubt if Sylvia’ll welcome a visit from the police, mind. Not after all that trouble with their Gordon.’

  ‘Gordon?’

  She looked Joe up and down as though she suspected he was an impostor. ‘He killed that little lass. Strangled her. I thought you would have known that, being a policeman.’

  Joe sent up a silent prayer of thanks. Miracles happened and this could be one of them. ‘Not Gordon Pledge?’

  ‘Aye that’s the one. Sylvia married a man called Pledge. Their Gordon’s in prison.’

  ‘Not now he isn’t. He’s escaped. Didn’t you hear it on the news?’

  ‘Never watch the news. It’s all bad. You’re not safe anywhere these days and you coppers do sod all about it,’ the woman said with her arms folded.

  As yet, no one had managed to trace Gordon Pledge’s parents who’d disappeared from their home in Harrogate. But now, with any luck, they might just score a double. Joe gave Alice’s former neighbour an apologetic smile and turned to go.

  Joe arrived at the incident room just as Emily was returning from a meeting with the Superintendent. She didn’t look happy, he thought, but his news was bound to cheer her up.

  ‘Why have you got that smug look on your face?’ she asked as soon as he entered her office.

  ‘You know this escaped prisoner, Gordon Pledge?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘That woman who was attacked in Singmass Close and survived … Alice Meadows. She’s his grandmother.’

  Emily raised her eyebrows, suddenly alert as though someone had recharged her batteries. ‘Small world. Have you found her?’

  ‘She’s living with her daughter – Pledge’s mother.’

  ‘But we don’t know where the parents are. They buggered off somewhere with no forwar
ding address and probably changed their name to avoid the scandal. Uniform have been trying to trace them since Gordon did a runner.’

  ‘Well, according to the grandmother’s neighbour, they moved to an isolated place somewhere between here and Pickering. Shouldn’t be too hard to trace.’

  ‘So when we find Alice, we can ask her about what happened back in the fifties and maybe catch her pervert grandson while we’re at it?’

  ‘The super’s always banging on about efficiency.’ This brought a wide smile to Emily’s face. ‘You ready for Whitby?’

  Emily stood up and yawned. Joe guessed that sitting in the centre of the incident room like a controlling spider was starting to get her down. She needed a change of scene.

  ‘Anything new come in on Abigail Emson’s private life?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps some connection with Benjamin Cassidy’s sordid little parties?’

  So far the latest victim seemed rather too good to be true and Joe was wondering whether anything interesting had come to light. But Emily shook her head. There was nothing new to report. Abigail Emson was an innocent student, making her way home after a shift behind the bar of the Black Lion. No amount of digging had revealed any connection with Cassidy, Philip Derby or Natalie Parkes. And, according to her friends and family, she hadn’t been that sort of girl anyway.

  ‘There’s still no word of Bridget Jervis,’ Joe said as they drove down the A64 towards Malton.

  ‘When we see her dad perhaps he’ll know where she is,’ Emily replied. But she sounded as if she didn’t quite believe it.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Joe softly.

  It was a long drive, but the Vale of Pickering glistened in the sunlight, the trees providing an artistic display of autumn golds and coppers. Soon they would shed their leaves and become bare skeletons reaching up to the huge sky. But the onset of winter was something Joe would rather not think about.

  He’d always loved Whitby with its ruined abbey glowering on the skyline and its steep winding streets leading down the harbour. But Albert Jervis’s nursing home stood on the main road leading into the town.

  In Bram Stoker’s novel, the undead Count Dracula had landed at Whitby and The Beacons Nursing Home was just the sort of place he’d have chosen to stay on his arrival. Gargoyles leered out from the guttering and the windows echoed the broken arches of the ruined abbey that stood a mile away overlooking the grey North Sea. As the set for a horror film, The Beacons was spot on. But Joe could think of better places to spend your twilight years.

  The front door was opened by a fat young woman wearing a cross between a nylon overall and a nurse’s uniform, and they were led to a conservatory full of greenery and wicker chairs. At first Joe couldn’t see anybody amongst the vegetation but the nurse made straight for the corner where a small, frail, old man was perched on a white wicker chair, his head nodding onto his chest as though he’d just fallen asleep.

  The nurse gave him a gentle shake and whispered in his ear. The old man looked up and Joe could see apprehension in his eyes. As though something nasty, that he imagined had gone away years ago, had just returned to haunt him.

  Joe stepped forward and introduced himself and Emily before giving the nurse a nod of dismissal. But the young woman seemed reluctant to leave them alone with her charge, as though she feared he might become a victim of police brutality. He caught Emily’s eye and she gave a slight shake of the head. If the woman stayed, it would probably do no harm.

  They sat down, squeezed together on a small white conservatory sofa with Emily’s ample hips taking up most of the room; Joe smiled at the old man to put him at his ease. He glanced at the nurse who was still standing her ground at Jervis’s shoulder. She was going nowhere.

  ‘Mr Jervis,’ Joe began. ‘We’ve been trying to find your daughter, Bridget.’

  The old man looked at Joe, his eyes full of suspicion. ‘Oh aye?’

  ‘Do you know where she is?’

  The answer was a shake of the head.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘It was about two weeks ago, wasn’t it Albert?’ the nurse piped up. ‘Remember, she popped in for an hour to see you. Nice surprise for you, it were.’

  Albert Jervis’s expression suggested that he hadn’t considered the surprise to have been particularly pleasing. But he nodded obediently in reply.

  Then after a few moments of silence he spoke. ‘Aye, it were the Wednesday. Half day closing. She came to see me when she closed the shop. Said she might not be coming for a couple of weeks. She had some’at to do.’ Jervis’s voice was surprisingly strong, a contrast to his feeble appearance. ‘And before you ask, she didn’t say what it were. And I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Has Bridget got a gentleman friend?’ Emily asked.

  ‘She never mentioned owt. But then she might not want me to know.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘We’re not close, me and our Bridget. She leads her own life,’ he said stoically, staring ahead. Since their arrival Joe had noticed that he hadn’t once made eye contact.

  ‘So you’ve no idea where she is?’ asked Emily.

  ‘No. I’ve no idea.’ The answer was final.

  Joe glanced up at the nurse who still hadn’t shifted from her post. ‘You used to live in Eborby, I believe, Mr Jervis. You ran a dolls’ hospital in Singmass Close.’

  There was no mistaking the wariness that appeared on his thin face. ‘Aye.’

  Emily caught Joe’s eye. It was time for her to take over the questioning. ‘Albert, do you remember the murders of four young women in Singmass Close when you were working there? You were questioned at the time. I’ve seen the statements you gave.’

  Albert Jervis stared at her for a while. ‘Course I remember, love. They called him the Doll Strangler. They kept on at me, the police. Where were you? What were you doing? Did you know this woman or that woman? I told ’em it were nowt to do wi’ me. But they didn’t believe me till I were having a drink with a mate of mine who were a special constable when the second murder happened. Then they believed me. Didn’t have much choice.’

  Joe could hear all the pent-up resentment of years in his voice. The resentment of the innocent man who’s hounded for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or was he wrong? Was his resentment against the women he’d killed and the police who tried to trap him?’

  ‘We know all about that, Mr Jervis. But we’d like your help. You see, in the last week there have been two more murders in Eborby, almost the same as the ones in the fifties. We think either the same man has struck again. Or maybe someone’s copying him.’

  Jervis snorted. ‘Well that ain’t much of a surprise, is it? There are all these bloody books and articles these days. What is it they call ’em? True crime? They put ideas in folks’ heads if you ask me.’

  Emily gave Joe an almost imperceptible nod. It was his turn; the man-to-man approach. ‘You see, Mr Jervis, there are certain aspects of the case that weren’t made public at the time. And this latest killer seems to know all about them, which makes us think he was around Singmass Close when the original murders took place. Or that he knew someone who was.’

  Jervis’ eyes suddenly lit up with interest.

  ‘That’s why we need your help. Did you know about … about any mutilations on the bodies?’ He was doing his best to keep it vague. He didn’t want the details to be made any more public than they already were.

  Jervis shook his head. ‘I know they were strangled and that he left dolls by ’em but that’s all. And they weren’t my dolls, mind. None of them came from my place. I told ’em that at the time. They weren’t from my hospital.’

  He shut his mouth tight. Either he didn’t know about the mutilations or he was an extremely good liar. But the origin of the dolls was a different matter. Joe suspected that he knew exactly where they came from.

  ‘Are you certain they didn’t come from your hospital?’ Joe looked him in the eye. He saw the pale-grey pupils flicking from side to side as though the
man was seeking an escape route.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘A hundred per cent certain?’ asked Emily.

  The old man hesitated, his eyes focused on his liver-spotted hands. ‘Well, not a hundred per cent. We had loads of ’em, you see. Hundreds. And I suppose they could have been pinched by someone as soon as they came in and I wouldn’t have known.’

  ‘You had an assistant at the time … Caleb Selly.’

  The man looked up at Joe and frowned, as if he’d just remembered something unpleasant. ‘Oh aye. Caleb.’

  ‘Could he have taken the dolls?’

  Jervis suddenly looked uncomfortable. ‘Suppose he could,’ he said slowly. ‘But I swear I didn’t notice or I would have said something.’

  ‘He was a suspect at the time but he had an alibi. He said he was with a lad called Peter Crawthwaite.’

  ‘Aye, I remember Peter.’

  ‘Peter’s girlfriend, Marion Grant, was the first victim.’

  ‘Aye. Right shock it were when she were found like that.’

  ‘What can you tell us about Peter?’

  ‘Nowt much to tell. He were just an ordinary lad. Not that I knew him that well.’

  ‘What about Caleb Selly?’

  Jervis thought for a few moments, a frown on his face as though he was reliving uncomfortable memories. ‘Caleb were an odd’un … funny with women. A lot of mothers used to come to us with their little girls to get their dolls mended but he’d never talk to ’em – it were always up to me. It were like he was scared of ’em. And he always made himself scarce when our Bridget came to see me … which she did, being a little lass who liked dolls. He had a big birthmark covering half his face. Might have made him self-conscious … I don’t know.’

  ‘Why did you give up the dolls’ hospital?’

  ‘I sold up in early fifty-eight cos there was talk of redeveloping the close. I moved to Harrogate and got a job in a toy shop. Then the wife died and our Bridget left home and never came back … story of my life.’ He gave Joe a bitter smile.

  ‘That was about the time the murders stopped,’ said Joe watching the man’s face.