by Deryn Lake
‘Yes. But it wasn’t serious, Inspector, it was just foolishness.’
Melissa Wyatt collapsed into another fit of weeping and Tennant, leaving the room, phoned for the remarkable WPC Monica Jones to come immediately and sit with the distressed woman while he and Potter, in typical male fashion, dodged the issue entirely.
They got back into the car and headed straight back to the incident room where Tennant put out a general call that a small girl had run away and every effort must be made to locate her. Then he turned to Potter.
‘I’ve just got a feeling about this. It was deep in Speckled Wood that you saw them all prancing about, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said his sergeant, and giggled aloud at the memory. ‘Human flesh can be quite off-putting, can’t it?’
‘Well, it depends on the circumstances,’ answered Tennant, smiling.
‘You’re right, of course. But I’ll never forget seeing a family once on a nudist beach. It was the poor young woman who had me almost hysterical. She was trying to get into a boat and had one foot on board and one on the mainland. I’ll leave the rest to your vivid imagination.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Tennant, laughing in spite of himself.
‘It was more a case of split the difference,’ answered Potter and guffawed long and loud to relieve the tension.
They eventually quietened down and headed for Speckled Wood, parked the car and silently walked to the grove. But tonight it was empty. There was not a sign of a living soul. Rather disappointed, they made their way back to the car.
‘Where now, sir?’
‘I think we’ll make a brief call on old Giles. He usually knows everything that’s going on.’
The lights in the farmhouse were on and so was the television. Giles had been sitting comfortably, his dogs asleep at his feet, a pint of beer at his side, watching – of all things – a film about Margot Fonteyn.
‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d have liked that kind of thing, Giles,’ said Tennant as they walked in.
‘I love ballet,’ he answered. ‘I go to Covent Garden whenever I can afford it.’
‘Do you really!’ exclaimed Potter in surprise.
‘Yes, I do. I enjoy it.’
‘I’m a bit of an opera buff myself,’ said Tennant.
‘Ah, Glyndebourne,’ said Giles. ‘I’ve been there and all.’
The conversation was taking such an unusual twist that Tennant decided to drop it. ‘Have you seen anything of Daft Dickie recently?’ he asked.
‘Not recently, no. He lived here quite contentedly for about a fortnight and then one night he just pushed off into the darkness. But I can assure you of this, Inspector, he was a good lad while he was here. Made no trouble for me or anyone else.’
‘When I interviewed him in Lewes it was very difficult to get him to talk, so the psychiatrist advised him to paint what he didn’t want to talk about. Did he?’
‘He did indeed. The hut’s bursting with paintings. Come and have a look at them.’
They followed him into the garden and down a winding path to where the hut, sturdy and timbered, stood bathed in moonlight.
‘Does it have any electricity?’
‘No, just a couple of oil lamps. I’ll light them.’
Giles unlocked the door and stepped into the darkness. They heard the striking of a match and then slowly the light from one of the oil lamps lit the scene. Tennant drew breath. A blaze of colour leapt out, dazzling him. A million stars danced before his eyes. There in all the splendour of the work of a true genius he saw slashed across canvas representations which brought him almost to his knees. Nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to find as he entered the shed.
Dickie had not only seen the murders but had painted in swingeing detail graphic images of them. Tennant and Potter stood silently, Potter holding up one lamp, as the brilliance of the scenes were revealed in all their brutal, stark, uncompromising detail. They saw the figure attached to the maypole; they saw the small creature in front, armed with bow and arrow, taking aim, back turned to the viewer. But there, hanging down from her wreath of flowers, was a mass of primrose hair.
‘Mr Grimm’s daughter,’ said Tennant.
‘Look at this one, sir.’
Potter was holding up a scene painted in vivid deep blue, a midnight scene made all the more horrific because two children were in the foreground, one mercilessly beating the other to death.
‘Remind you of anything?’ said Tennant, his voice suddenly harsh.
‘James Bulger, sir. There are children who are thoroughly evil and I’m afraid we’ve come across another one.’
Tennant sighed heavily. ‘I haven’t experienced anything like this. Oh, yes, I’ve had little thieves, little beasts whose parents have given up on them, juvenile delinquents, you name it. But killing for killing’s sake? God Almighty. The child must be deranged.’
‘Do you remember the sweet face of Mary Bell, sir? She strangled two boys while she was still eleven years old and when she came out from whatever sentence she got, the court granted anonymity for her and her daughter for life.’
‘Like James Bulger’s killers. Total anonymity.’
The two men stood staring at one another, shaking their heads.
Giles, who had been standing close by, said, ‘So Miss Goody Two-Shoes is the guilty party?’
‘So it would seem, my friend. But keep this absolutely confidential for the time being. Oh, and Giles …’
‘Yes?’
‘Phone this number tomorrow and say you’re ringing on my behalf. It’s a well-known art dealer and I want him to come and have a look at these.’
‘Do you mean that he might buy them? Will our Dickie be famous one day?’
‘There’s always a chance. They buy very strange things in the art world.’
And with that the two policemen hurried to their car.
TWENTY-ONE
Alone, under the full moon, Major Hugh Wyatt paused for breath. He felt as if a mighty hand had been laid upon him and he had changed into someone who lay just below the surface, someone with whom he could identify, a primitive hunter, a man who righted wrongs. But even as he felt these things sweep over him, forcefully, enough to make him lose his breath all over again, he had a moment of intense realization. No, he was not any of those things. He was Major Hugh Wyatt who had served in Afghanistan and whose mission it was to see right done.
He straightened up, listening as immediately above his head a bird began to sing. Surely it must be a nightingale, but there weren’t any nightingales in Speckled Wood. But then reality and make-believe had become somewhat blurred as he wrestled with the problem of his granddaughter being a monstrous creation, that she tortured people and cats, that she revelled in inflicting pain, that she was depraved and ugly. That she must be cast from the earth and that he was the man whose mission it was to accomplish this.
Hugh suddenly sat down on the ground and wept bitterly. It was no good pretending he was the one who must rid the world of an evil sprite. He had loved her ever since she had been placed in Melissa’s arms by a nurse in the hospital where his boy and his little wife had been taken after they were killed outright. They had been in the mortuary but the baby – twelve weeks old – had looked at Melissa and given her the most beautiful smile.
‘She will never know them,’ Melissa had said through her streaming tears.
‘We will be her parents, darling,’ he had said, being mannish, putting a comforting arm round her shoulders and realizing in that moment that his future would change irrevocably. He thought of all the years stretching ahead and for a minute – one brief minute – he had rejected utterly the thought of taking on a baby that would grow up into a girl who he would have to act as a father to. He had only had two sons and knew nothing about rearing females. But then the gentle side of him, the side that had wept when one of his soldiers had been blown to smithereens, when one of his pets had died, when poor Samba had lost his tail, took over his
thoughts. And he had tickled the baby and watched her smile and had thought only of the immediate future. But now he must blunder on. Hoping that, perhaps, he would not have to undertake the dreaded deed. Praying that fate would open another path to him.
Out in the silvery moonlight pretty Isabelle, little Belle, was dancing. She was wearing a dress of white chiffon which Chris O’Hare had given her as he had dropped on his knees before her and said, ‘Oh, daughter of the Dark Master. I love you eternally. Let us be together. Always.’
At these words something had triggered in Belle’s mind and she looked back on recent events with a kind of growing horror. It was if she had suddenly become twins and knew what her evil side had done and she was struck with a dreadful sensation of loathing and fear.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Go away. It’s you who made me be wicked. I don’t like you any more. I’m going home.’
He looked at her in that extraordinary light, his blond hair bleached white, his skin like parchment.
‘Don’t say that to me,’ he moaned pathetically. ‘I worship you. I have sought you all my life.’
Then she turned and ran, her feet seeming to float above the ground as she made her way to the only building she could see, the deserted children’s orphanage that reared against the vivid sky like a vast and menacing shadow.
Daft Dickie Donkin was sitting in what had once been the dining hall of that building created by the nation’s Victorian do-gooders. Tiny babies, teenaged boys, girls who wandered in a daze from place to place, had been herded by sharp-faced women in black bombazine and bonnets who had led them to this terrifying asylum where they could all be brought up together and turned into clean and decent folk who would eventually take their place in the world as a servant. The great, deserted building certainly loomed magnificently from a distance, but close to it was decaying. The ornately decorated fireplace in the drawing room was slowly disintegrating and graffiti-sprayers had been at work all over the walls with words like SMEAR, RIP, KT LUVS MJ, TITS.
The vast edifice was a huge attraction to youngsters from around and about. It was obviously the place to go to smoke weed or snort cocaine or for a quickie, many broken and narrow beds still occupying the dormitories, waiting for owners who would never return. Or even, if you dared your parents’ wrath, a place to spend the night. This was not so greatly favoured as the building had a reputation for being haunted and it was said that a girl in Victorian orphanage clothes would walk weeping through the various rooms. But she was not so frightening as the shape of the boy of fourteen who had hanged himself from the rafters and dangled there to this day, for those who had the eyes to see him.
Dickie had thought the old place quiet and peaceful, blissfully unaware that small figures had darted like rats at the whispered word that he was approaching. Even the toughest kid in the neighbourhood would not dare to take on the old mad tramp, whose size and bulk alone were enough to frighten even the biggest little man. So it was appreciating the quiet and the solitude that Dickie sat in a chair, which sighed with age as his bulk descended on it. The landlady of The Barley Mow had given him a packet containing some leftover sandwiches, which he had been greatly pleased with. And now he opened the parcel to reveal an assortment of brown and white. Like a child he saved his favourite cheese and onion to the last and began by stolidly munching his way through an egg and cress on white. And then he heard a noise coming from above. It was weeping.
Dickie had heard the ghost stories surrounding the old place many times and was neither frightened nor perturbed by them. Instead he went on eating his sandwiches, wondering what was going to happen next. The white floating figure drew alongside him and turned to look at him. He saw huge black eyes with all the sorrows of the world written in them. He saw a weary, dreary little face. He smiled at it and held out his pack of sandwiches but she merely sighed and floated on her way, straight through the dining room wall and into the room beyond. Dickie shook his head and decided that he wasn’t at all nervous of ghosts.
He snoozed for a while and then was woken abruptly by another sound. This came from outside and was definitely of human origin. Someone else was approaching the building. Moving carefully, Dickie proceeded from the dining room into the great hall and then out of what had once been a magnificent front door. Then he stood, blinking like a cave-dweller in the sudden importuning light of the moon. Gradually his eyes refocused and he found that he was looking at another ghost. A little figure dressed in white, pale blonde hair swinging round its shoulders as it turned slowly round and round in a strange, unworldly dance of its own making. But then his whole body shuddered with shock as he realized that he was looking at her. He stood motionless, hoping that she would not see him, for she was the demon who had lain on his chest and stared into his eyes as he woke up but, he encouraged himself, he had thrown her off on that occasion so was perfectly capable of doing so again.
But then, unbelievably, a morris dancer came into view. Blackened face, plumed top hat, tattercoat, black trousers with bells tied on. Aware of him, the girl stopped in her tracks.
‘Why have you come?’
‘Looking for you, of course. You don’t think I’m going away, do you?’
‘I told you to leave me alone.’
He laughed, a deep, sullen sound. ‘Listen, little child of Satan. You have nowhere to go but with me. Now that your parents know what you have done – oh, yes, they know all right – they will never see you again. You are hated and reviled by all those who do not understand your presence here. Only I do and I have sworn to the Great Master that I will defend you for the rest of my life.’
She stared at him, her eyes growing wider so that it seemed to Dickie they were two vivid coals burning in the middle of her face.
‘I want to see my mother. I know she’ll take me back whatever I’ve done.’
‘Even after your recent attack on her darling pussy cat?’ answered the morris man, and laughed aloud.
She flew at him – or that’s how it seemed to Dickie. She just covered the air and landed on him, all claws and vicious tearing, where he stood on the edge of the dank, decaying and empty swimming pool – a gift to the orphanage by benefactors in the twenties. He rocked at the impact and stood swaying uncertainly. His plumed hat fell backwards so that his hair turned white in the moonshine.
‘You cannot kill me. I love you,’ he shouted.
The girl was not human, of that Dickie was certain. For answer she spat at him and clawed his face, breaking the skin so that rivulets of blood appeared.
‘Stop it, I beg you,’ he roared and then, very slowly, as if the scene was being played in slow motion, the pair of them fell backwards and there was nothing, nothing but a tremendous silence.
Dickie stood, transfixed, not at all certain what he had seen. Eventually he shuffled to the edge of that cavernous opening in the ground that had once been a beautiful swimming pool, and peered downwards. They lay in the deep end amongst the piles of rotting leaves and filthy detritus that people had thrown in. They lay like lovers, not looking at all as if they had just been fighting. She, with all the evil drained from her features, appeared like a normal child, and Chris O’Hare had his blackened face close to hers as if nothing could ever tear her away from him. That they were both dead, heads completely fractured, was obvious even to the tramp.
He straightened up and decided to walk away and as he did so he said one word: ‘Fate,’ erupted deep from his chest, and the sound of it reverberated round the ancient walls of the crumbling orphanage.
TWENTY-TWO
Tennant had called out a huge manhunt for the child as soon as the penny had dropped as to what she really was. Yet he could still hardly comprehend it. An innocent child who tortured cats and murdered other children was almost beyond comprehension. Yet all he had to do was think of the Bulger case and his incredulity was gone in one terrible swipe. Yet for Tennant personally, though it was part of a learning curve he should long ago have come to terms with, it was only now th
at the full horror struck him forcibly.
Potter had taken it far more phlegmatically.
‘It’s all the images that we get brainwashed with, sir. Kiddies laughing and playing on TV adverts, all of ’em enjoying life with wonderful parents. Then we go back to the Victorian period when they had texts all over their houses and cards portraying curly-haired children kneeling in prayer with a band of kindly angels looking on. But it was just at that time that Constance Kent threw her four-year-old brother down the privy pan. So there’s no accounting for it. Not really.’
‘Do you think the child was mad?’
‘Were the boys who snatched little James Bulger?’
Tennant threw his hands in the air. ‘God alone knows!’
‘As you say, Inspector.’
They had teams of officers and cars combing the area from Tunbridge Wells to Brighton and all outlying districts in between. And so it was that they found Hugh Wyatt, dishevelled and dirty and weeping like a broken man, sitting on the wet ground, unarmed and definitely not dangerous.
‘What have we here?’ said a police officer, flashing the light of a torch into his face.
‘It might be a tramp,’ answered another.
‘No, I don’t think so. I think it’s one of the citizens of Lakehurst. Come on, old boy.’
They heaved him to his feet and it was then that some semblance of normality came back to Major Wyatt.
‘I’ve been a bloody fool,’ he assured the officers. ‘I’ve been out looking for my granddaughter, Isabelle Wyatt, but I haven’t found her and now I’m too tired to look any more.’
One of the policemen talked rapidly into the radio on his uniform.
‘Half of Sussex police force is out looking for her, Major. May I ask you to come along with us.’
‘Can you take me home please?’
‘Yes, but first of all we’d like to ask you some questions.’
‘Oh, dear,’ said Hugh quietly. ‘I suppose you’ve heard all about the recent incident.’
