by Steve Mosby
And in his basement, they also discovered the remains of Emily Price. I kept thinking about Emily, and how I must have come very close to finding her that day, or meeting the man who took her. I was glad that, in the end, she had been found: returned to her family so that they could lay her to rest and receive a level of peace from that.
Of course, I knew the official story wasn't true. It had all been Garland. Even if I didn't quite understand how it had all been accomplished, it was clear that his salvage operation had been successful; and like he'd told me, the police knew everything they would ever need to. The facts might be twisted, and parts might be missing, but as long as nobody looked at it too closely, it was enough. It would hold together.
Sarah and I would stand behind it, rightly or wrongly, and remain obscured from view.
But there was one thing I realised I couldn't leave alone. Garland had described the house on Suncast Lane as being one of their old places. I didn't know exactly what he'd meant by that: whether he was saying the place was empty now, or if something or someone might still be there, lying forgotten, no longer of interest to his customers. I fought the idea for a time - told myself I would be putting us both at risk - but after a while
I decided I couldn't ignore that possibility, or perhaps that I shouldn't.
So one day, I left Sarah alone in our hotel room, and went out into the city streets. There was an Internet cafe just around the corner from where we were staying. I paid for an hour and found myself a seat at the back, where nobody could see.
After setting up an anonymous email account, I searched online and found an email address for Whitrow Police Department, then sent a message marked for the attention of Todd Dennis. I mentioned Kearney's name and told him he should see what was inside number ten, Suncast Lane. In case I'd misremembered the number, I told him he'd recognise it from some graffiti on the shutters.
Before I could debate it any more, I pressed send.
I was about to get up and leave, but suddenly I had a strange idea. So, instead of logging off and disappearing, I opened a new window in the browser, navigated to doyouwanttosee.co.uk, and logged in using Sarah's old details.
When I searched for Ellis's posts, I received the same list as before. After scrolling through for a time, I reached the page where the footage of Marie had been posted.
'Bridge suicide - bitch in bits'
I opened that post, and the footage was gone.
It had just occurred to me that when Garland removed the image of Emily Price, he might simply have wiped all of Ellis's stored files in order to save time. And he had. So the video had been deleted for ever.
I nodded to myself. It was another of those things that didn't really matter, not now, but at the same time I was glad. Nobody would ever watch that again. If Marie existed anywhere, it would be in my head, and I'd do my best to remember her well.
Finally, I logged out and left.
That afternoon, to be on the safe side, we moved on.
I still do my best to think of Marie that way. I try to remember her at Coniston, and the way she held my hand then, or else at some other happier time, when my presence might not have been enough, but at least it was something. And I try hard not to blame myself for what she did because that, if nothing else, was not my fault.
Even so, there are times when I lie awake at night, unable to sleep, and I think back to the last time I saw her - properly saw her - on that day in the kitchen when she left me and did not come back. And on those nights I think:
I wish she could have seen how beautiful she was.
I wish she could have just seen that.
* * *
Chapter Fifty
Suncast Lane.
Even in daylight, the name wouldn't have been appropriate. It conjured up images of fields with lazily swaying grass, and bright white cottages and streams - not these flat, grey houses, with pale, ghostly faces. Everything around looked dead: tombs of brick and perforated metal. Suncast Lane was in the middle of the estate, and Todd had the impression that something had died here, and then the poison and decay had seeped out into the neighbouring areas, spreading slowly and destroying everything it touched.
He closed the car door and listened: the slam echoed and faded, and then there was nothing. No sound here at all. Looking around, there were no lights in any of the houses. They were all long-abandoned, of course: destined to be knocked down when there was money to be made: when the details were finally pulled out of whatever dusty old council file they'd been lost in. In the meantime, the street appeared forgotten, like a bricked-up room in an old house that had long since changed owners.
Johnson was waiting by the front of the house, holding a torch; Ross was standing a short way down the footpath that disappeared off by the side. Both of them looked a little freaked out by what they'd found inside. Todd hadn't given the email he'd received too much attention, but the person who'd contacted him had mentioned Paul, and so he'd sent these two along to see what, if anything, might be here. Even now, after they'd been inside the place, he wasn't quite clear what that was.
'You two OK?'
Johnson nodded, but didn't look too sure about it.
'Yes, sir. There's a bad feeling in there, though.'
'Yeah, well. There's a bad feel out here too.'
Todd stepped around Johnson, and looked at the building. From the front, it looked as though every conceivable entrance and exit had been sealed up with grilles of metal, all of it bolted solidly into the brickwork. It took him a moment to see the white mark that had been daubed there. A small half moon. It wasn't exactly obvious, and he wouldn't have noticed it if the email hadn't mentioned graffiti. As it was, he had no idea what it was supposed to signify.
'Any word on the last known occupier?' he said.
'Banyard,' Johnson said. 'Francis Banyard. But that was years ago.'
Todd nodded. 'And what am I meant to be looking at?'
'Round the back. The window's been… messed with.'
'I meant inside.'
'Well, there's something weird in one of the downstairs rooms. But the main thing's upstairs. First door on the right. That's where it looks like this person's been sleeping. There's rubbish everywhere and it stinks.'
This person. Todd looked back up the street, thinking it over. He was a little impatient with Johnson for getting spooked so easily: all the two officers had found was evidence that someone had been living rough inside. And yet, he felt it himself. Everything around here was deserted and almost deathly quiet. The house was the one mentioned specifically in the email. And it was the only one, as far as he could see, that had been singled out by white graffiti on its shutters.
A breeze picked up. Somewhere out of sight he heard a can rattle along the pavement.
He turned back and held his hand out for the torch.
'Right,' he said. 'Thank you.'
'Be careful, sir. The stairs are half rotten.'
Todd glanced at the house again. In the dark, with the windows shuttered over, it made him think of a corpse with pennies over its eyes. He still didn't like this woolly thinking, but Johnson had been right. Something about the place felt bad.
'I want you two to keep an eye out,' he said. 'Whoever's been sleeping here, we want to speak to them, OK? Whatever this is, we're not losing it.'
'Yes, sir.'
He clicked on the torch and moved through the small garden at the front of the house. The paving slabs had long since been stolen, he noticed - this place might have been forgotten, but not before it had been stripped bare of anything that could be salvaged and sold. Around the back, he scanned the rear of the house, quickly finding the window Johnson had mentioned, then stepped awkwardly over some debris, and shone the light around the edges of the frame.
Todd frowned.
Someone had added hinges at the far side of the grille.
He took a moment to examine them, confirming not only that they were really there, but also the work that must have b
een involved. The hinges were made of different metal to the main sheet, and had been soldered onto it. There was some slight damage to the walls where the original bolts must have been levered out; the only ones that remained were on the right- hand side, and they'd been sawn off. They were just long enough to keep it snug to the wall, so that a couple of light turns would release them.
Which meant that someone had come here, removed the metal sheet blocking the window and transformed it into a carefully-disguised door.
Why on earth would someone do that?
Todd shivered slightly, feeling a tightness in his chest. As he pulled the grille open, then breathed in the stale air from the room beyond, he had that impression again: that someone awful had been staying here, drawn to the place because it matched them. The tightness came because they were out now - prowling somewhere in the dark - but might return at any time, like he was about to enter a monster's house in a fairytale, one where a pot had been left bubbling softly to itself on the stove.
Come on.
He clambered inside, a little awkwardly, using the torch to make sure of his footing. The room within was empty and bare, but flaking pipes on one wall suggested it had once been the kitchen. Now, it was cold and smelled of mildew and earth. His torch ran across a doorway at the far side. The light switches in the corridor beyond had been stripped away, leaving wires twisting out from ulcers in the plaster.
Todd made his way straight into the hall. The torchlight cast a shadow of ribs above the staircase which slowly rotated as he walked down the corridor and then shone the light up at the landing above. Then he started up them. Johnson had been right about the rot, as well. The steps were too damp and soft to creak, but they gave slightly under his weight, like the rotting hull of an old ship.
There's rubbish everywhere and it stinks.
It was the first door on the right, he reminded himself - but he would have recognised it anyway, as the rubbish was spilling out of the doorway there. Curled, yellowing newspaper pages; swollen black bags; old, crusted food cartons. Stained clothes. Todd grimaced as the torchlight played across the whole mess.
And it did stink, he realised. It really did. A nasty, unhealthy smell. Like rot, but somehow more alive than that. He didn't think it was coming from the refuse on the floor, either - more that it was lingering from the presence of whoever lived here amongst it, as though the person had spent so much time in contact with decay that they'd caught it like a disease. It was awful in the same way the house itself felt tainted and awful. There was something unnatural about it that made you want to back away.
But it was familiar, too.
That idea nagged at him. He thought he'd smelled this before, or perhaps just a hint of it, but he couldn't quite remember where.
Todd stepped cautiously over the rubbish, searching out a small, bare patch of floorboard to place his foot down on. The torch light cut into the darkness, revealing a blue sleeping bag lying unzipped in the far corner, surrounded by empty bottles and packets of food. Beside them, the thick stubs of candles, their wicks scorched black. A row of old books was balanced upright on the floorboards.
Who was living here like this? It could be a derelict, he supposed, but for some reason that didn't seem right. For one thing, the graffiti on the shutter bothered him: it marked the place out. And as squalid as it looked, this room gave the impression of being someone's home. He couldn't explain it, but it felt as though the person staying here had picked this house in particular, out of all the others, because it held special meaning for them, or had done once. They hadn't just bedded down here at random.
What was the last occupier's name again?
Todd moved the beam of light along the back wall, picking out more bin liners, more piles of clothes, a sports bag. A magazine with a child's face laughing on the cover. Dirty crockery, some of it broken…
He stopped.
And then slowly moved his hand back, allowing the light to return to the sports bag again. It looked relatively new compared to the other items in the room, and appeared to have been placed down carefully, as though the contents were more valuable to its owner than all of his other possessions combined.
Todd stared at it. The zip was secured in place by a thin strip of black plastic, just like the bag they'd found in the room below Arthur Hammond's house. The one that had been opened to reveal the remains of Emily Price.
Melissa Noble, he thought. Her body was still missing.
Suddenly, the air in here felt like it was tingling.
Todd took a step back, out of the room.
The sight of the bag made him remember where he'd noticed the stench before. He'd been distracted and upset at the time - standing over Paul's body, surrounded by Hammond's collection of dead things - but it had been down there: just the faintest trace of it, hanging in the air in the old man's basement. And then fading away. As though something even more horrible had been down there, only minutes before they arrived, but had slipped away just in time.
He kept the light trained on the bag. As he looked at it, something Paul had said returned to him.
So what if Ellis isn't Mister X?
He'd been right about that, of course. It was Hammond's fingerprint that had been found on the victims' foreheads, and it was Hammond's basement that both Rebecca and Emily Price had been discovered in. It had been him who had shot Paul, then taken his own life. But then… what if Hammond hadn't been their Mister X either? What if it had been someone else altogether?
Someone else…
That reminded him of what Rebecca Wingate had said. When they'd finally been able to interview her, she'd not been able to tell them very much about those last few moments, aside from dimly remembering two loud gunshots. But she had also said something else. Something that hadn't made any sense, and which, at the time, Todd had decided was likely due to her being blindfolded and delirious, her mind half-burned away by fever.
I think there was someone else in there with me.
His skin began to crawl.
Someone else. The more he thought about it, the more certain he felt. The man who had been sleeping here - beside that bag - had also been in Hammond's basement. He'd never been as intuitive as Paul - never able to put the pieces together as quickly or nimbly - but they were there, and he could see the beginnings of one picture they might make. And as connections began to appear, he felt a sense of resolve hardening inside him.
Banyard, he thought. That was the name of the last person who'd lived in this house. Francis Banyard. So was it him that had been staying here? Come back to his old home for some reason? Well, they would track him down, wherever he was. They would stake this house out - this whole fucking estate, if they needed to - and they'd see who came back.
We'll get this man.
He played the light across the rubbish, thinking about Paul again. At first, it was the image of his partner's body, lying on the floor of Hammond's basement - but then he shook his head, ridding himself of that memory. Instead, he concentrated on the intensity that had always been there in Paul's eyes. The determination. The pledges he'd felt compelled to make. The fact that, against all the odds, he had followed that and found Rebecca Wingate. And as the beam of light settled back on the sports bag again, Todd thought:
Whoever this man is. We'll get him.
It sounded a lot like a promise, but he made it anyway.
There's something weird in one of the downstairs rooms.
He would have to get forensics in to examine the scene upstairs, and he also needed to start orchestrating the surveillance side of things. But, on his way back outside, Todd decided to quickly check the other thing that Johnson and Ross had found. As he stepped through the doorway into what must once have been the house's lounge his thoughts were already running off through the logistics of the long night ahead of him. When he saw what was there, those thoughts tripped slightly.
Like most of the other rooms, this one had been stripped bare. But it wasn't what was missing th
at stood out. It was what had been added afterwards. On one side of the room, an old, faded mattress rested on the floor. It was stained in places, as though coffee had been spilled on it, and the springs inside were visible, pressing against the thin fabric like half-crushed cola cans. Green mould speckled the sides. At the opposite end of the room there was a tall-legged wooden stool and, on top of that, a video camera.
And that was all. There was nothing else to see: just a revolting, makeshift bed with a camera pointed at it. But the scene was incongruous because it felt staged. It reminded him of a room in a museum, in fact - one of those exhibits where the original desks and chairs and clothes had been collected and placed down carefully, recreating the bedroom or study of someone famous and dead. A room where people came to see, to get a hint of what it had been like to be present at the time.
A moment preserved.
Todd thought about the graffiti outside. And then the man who'd been sleeping upstairs.
Is this why you chose to stay here?
He crossed to the wooden stool. It wasn't a video camera, he realised. It was much older than that: mechanical and sturdy. The sides were made of bobbled black plastic, with circular loops of metal jutting up from the top like rabbits' ears. All of it was coated in dust, as though it had been here for a very long time. There was no tape in the reels, but a snipped trail of frames had been left on top of the machine.
He rummaged in his pocket -
Tweezers…
- and then picked up the tape of cells. It was impossible to see what was on them in the dark, so he moved the torch beam behind to illuminate the tiny images and the rest of the room collapsed into blackness. And as he saw what was on the film, his hand began to tremble.
'Oh God,' he said.
The first frame was a simple, innocuous shot of a street. It was a winter's day, the air white with ice and fog. A boy was in the centre of the frame, wrapped up in a duffel coat and staring straight at the camera from several metres away. He was only eight or nine years old, but Paul Kearney's features were already clear on the boy's face. You could see the blueprint for the man he'd became, as though the most important part of him - the essence - had been frozen in place at this moment right here.
