The Stranger Diaries

by Elly Griffiths

  In the car park there’s an ancient Range Rover and a woman I don’t even recognise as Great-Grandma. Last time I saw her, it was at my grandma’s house in London and she seemed really old then — I mean, she must be nearly ninety — but here she is wearing jeans and a Barbour and giving me a fierce hug.

  ‘Georgie! Ah, you’ve grown so bonny. Just like your ma.’

  ‘Hallo,’ I say, feeling shy for some reason. But Mum, who never chats, is chatting away like mad so it doesn’t matter if I’m quiet. I get into the back of the car with Herbert. Mum is talking to Great-Grandma about The Situation.

  ‘We just had to get away.’

  ‘You’ll be safe here,’ says Great-Grandma, swerving to avoid a Highland cow.

  I try to block it out. ‘Ella . . . diaries . . . Simon . . . school . . . Rick . . . stalking . . . scared . . .’ I’m watching for the first sight of Ullapool, the harbour with the white houses on the edge of the sea, the mountains behind. It’s like that TV series I used to watch as a child. I start to hum the theme tune.

  ‘Balamory,’ says Mum. ‘Are you happy to be here, Georgie?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. Last night’s train journey seemed so strange and surreal: Vee’s texts, the man with the smile, Patrick saying ‘Hell is empty’. Now, it’s as if we’ve come back to life. The sun is sparkling on the water and even the cows seem to be benevolent, smiling underneath their hennaed fringes. Great-Grandma is talking about snow; the highest hills are completely white.

  ‘It’s so warm today,’ she’s saying. ‘Like the Bahamas.’

  The temperature dial on the car says minus one.

  I remember Great-Grandma’s house quite well. It’s a little away from the others, on a spit of land with water on both sides. I don’t remember Great-Granddad but apparently he used to have a boat and would row across the harbour every morning to get the paper. Herbert is very excited and starts barking at the seagulls. In the distance the ferry is making its way slowly towards the open sea.

  GG shows me to my room, which is in the attic. The bed has a patchwork quilt and the white walls reflect the water. There’s a desk, a bookcase and even a little rocking chair. I want to stay there for ever but there’s lunch downstairs, bread and soup and a funny cheese that comes wrapped in a cloth. If it does snow, maybe we’ll be cut off from everything. Maybe we’ll be here for Christmas.

  Mum and GG start another long conversation. Once again I’m amazed how chatty Mum is with her grandmother. She’s always very clipped and reserved with her mother, my grandmother. But now she’s talking about Henry, the man from Cambridge. It’s quite interesting — I had no idea Henry was with her on the weekend when Mr Lewis was killed — but after a while my eyes start to close.

  ‘Och, she’s tired out,’ says Great-Grandma. ‘Why don’t you go upstairs and have a snooze, Georgie?’

  I’m only too happy to go back to my little room in the rafters. Herbert comes with me and I pull the patchwork quilt over us both. I dream about trains, old-fashioned trains like in The Stranger. I’m trying to escape, running through the tilting carriages, ricocheting off the walls, jumping the nightmare chasm between the cars. But he’s there — out-of-sight but always the same distance behind me — moving smoothly and relentlessly, unknown but somehow also hideously familiar.

  When I wake, it’s dark outside. Herbert is sitting up, listening.

  There are voices downstairs. Someone must have knocked on the door.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ I hear Mum say. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  Herbert starts to growl, a noise I’ve never heard him make before, right in the back of his throat, like a much bigger dog. His teeth are bared and, for a second, I’m almost scared of him. I move towards the door and then there’s a terrible scream from Mum. ‘Georgie!’ she cries. A downstairs door slams and there are footsteps on the stairs, steady, determined footsteps. I back to the very farthest corner of the attic room. I try to make Herbert come with me but he’s still standing by the door. He has stopped growling; it’s as if he’s waiting.

  The door is flung open. I see a dark figure, a raised knife and Herbert, like a tiny white bullet, flying into action.

  Then he’s lying in a bloodstained heap on the floor and the knife is moving towards me.

  Part the twelfth

  Harbinder

  Chapter 46

  We left Clare’s house at midday and I was on the plane to Inverness at one-forty. We rang the local police and asked them to check on Clare and Georgia in Ullapool. But I wanted to get there myself and Donna agreed. I had never travelled on a domestic flight before. In fact, I’ve only been on a plane twice, once to India when I was ten and once on a so-called romantic mini-break to Barcelona. I was amazed at how easy it was. I had no luggage and I just whisked through security, waving my warrant cards at the officials.

  Sitting on the plane was sheer torture though. I wanted to get there immediately. It was a nightmare not being able to use my phone. I’d read somewhere that all that stuff about not using your phone on aeroplanes is made up but I didn’t like to risk it. What if it interfered with the radar or something? So I sat with my phone in ‘flight mode’ on my lap, trying to read an article about ‘The ten best beaches in the world’. Ironically, Ullapool was one of them. The businessman next to me was tapping importantly at his laptop, as if the world would end if he stopped working for a second.

  We landed at three-twenty and I was at the taxi rank at half-past, having elbowed all my fellow passengers out of the way. A police car was waiting for me.

  ‘DS Kaur?’ He added about a dozen extra Rs.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘I’m Sergeant Jim Harris.’ He was tall, about thirty with dark-red hair and a rather wolfish expression. I was pleased. He looked like someone who would drive fast and not ask too many questions.

  ‘How long will it take to get to Ullapool?’ I asked as we left the airport.

  ‘About an hour forty,’ said Jim Harris. ‘It’s one of the bonniest drives in the world.’

  He may well have been right. We certainly passed greenery and mountains and lakes (lochs?). But I could only think about getting to Clare and Georgia in time. Jim said that the local ‘polis’ had checked on Mrs Cassidy’s house and there was nothing amiss but I still had a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I tried to ring them both but there was no answer. ‘Och, the signal is bad up here,’ said Jim. He actually said, ‘Och’.

  It was dark by the time we arrived in Ullapool, the harbour lights glittering. To be fair, Jim hadn’t spoken much on the journey and now he drove efficiently through the narrow streets and out onto a spit of land with water on both sides. The Cassidy house was on the end. Light shone from a room in the roof. I thought of The Stranger and the lights in the ruined house, of the lights I’d seen in the old factory, of will-o-the-wisps and the ghosts of dead children calling from the sea.

  I was out of the car almost before it stopped. There were two cars parked outside the house, a battered Range Rover and a red Toyota Aygo. The front door was swinging open — not a good sign in Scotland on a winter night. I sprinted up the path, calling, ‘Clare! Georgie!’

  There were shouts from downstairs where a heavy chair had been pushed against a door but I knew that I had to go up. Two flights up I reached the door of an attic bedroom where a tall young man was standing over a terrified Georgia, knife raised. Herbert lay, covered in blood, at her feet.

  I threw myself on the man but he was so big that I merely knocked him off balance. I grabbed at the arm with the knife but he threw me backwards, so hard that I hit my head on the floor. I scrambled upright and launched myself at him again. There was screaming coming from downstairs and — thank God — heavy policeman’s footsteps on the stairs. Jim Harris took the man down with a neat rugby tackle and I knelt on his chest to read him his rights.

  ‘Ty Greenall, I’m
arresting you for the murder of Ella Elphick and Rick Lewis and the attempted murders of Simon Newton and Georgia Newton.’

  Part the thirteenth

  Harbinder and Clare

  Chapter 47

  Harbinder

  It was Natasha’s mention of Ty that made me think of the postcard. Georgie had a boyfriend who sent her pictures of cuddly rabbits and hearts. When I saw the writing, I knew. We drove straight to the pub where Ty worked and were told that he had a few days off. ‘Do you have an address for him?’ I asked. ‘No,’ said the manager, looking worried, ‘but he was very reliable. Never late for his shift.’ That was because Ty had been living just down the road, squatting in the old cement factory. He admitted as much when I interviewed him at the police station in Garve.

  ‘I was living in the factory,’ he said. ‘I was watching Clare. I used to light candles at night and watch her. I love her.’

  ‘When did this start?’ I asked. I didn’t want to do an in-depth interview until I got Ty back to Sussex — I reckoned that Neil and Donna deserved to be involved — but I had to know a few things first.

  ‘I was working as a barman in Hythe,’ he said. ‘Clare came to the hotel for a training course. I fell in love with her at first sight. I used the pass key to get into her room and read her diary. I decided there and then. She needed protecting. I followed her to Sussex and got a job at the pub. I met Georgia in town. She was drunk — she’s too wild for my liking, it must be a terrible worry for Clare — so I decided to become her boyfriend and look after her. And, of course, it brought me closer to Clare.’ He smiled as if this was all perfectly logical, commendable even. He was a big man, good-looking even with the bruises from Jim Harris’s rough handling all over his face. But, as soon as I looked into his eyes, I knew that the defence would be pleading insanity.

  ‘Why did you kill Ella?’ I asked.

  ‘She was upsetting Clare,’ said Ty immediately. ‘Going on about sleeping with a married man, making Clare do all the work at school. Ella was nothing better than a whore. Rick wasn’t any better. Clare said that she hated him in her diary. So I killed him too. I rang him and told him I knew something about Ella. He was shitting himself. Thought I was going to tell his wife about him playing away. I told him to sit in the chair and then I went behind him and strangled him with the wire. I tried to make the murders like The Stranger. I found the book in Georgie’s room and I knew it was one of Clare’s favourites. Along with The Woman in White of course.’

  That smile again.

  ‘What about Simon Newton? What about Georgia? You can’t have thought Clare wanted them dead. Clare adores Georgie.’

  ‘She said she was happier before she met Simon, before Georgia was born,’ said Ty. ‘Simon was always upsetting her, calling her a bad mother, going on about his new wife and children. Anyway, I needed to get rid of them both so Clare and I could start again.’

  I was getting worried now. More of this stuff and he’d definitely serve time in a mental institution rather than the top-security prison he deserved. But, when I spoke to the police in Kent, where Ty had lived with his grandparents, I found that he already had a police warning for stalking a woman, his ex-English teacher, as it happens. Even if we couldn’t this in court, the incident strengthened the case for Ty Greenall being the sort of killer who watched and waited and then pounced.

  I left Ty in the tender care of the Highland Police and went back to the hotel where I’d booked a room. Clare had said that I could stay with her grandmother but I thought that the Cassidy women probably had enough to cope with without putting up with me. Besides I was terribly tired. The hotel was modern and featureless, just what I wanted. I bought chips on the way back and chased them down with a can of Irn Bru, which, as Jim had promised me, really did taste like iron filings. At The Caledonian Thistle I showered and put on the scratchy white bathrobe hanging in the wardrobe. Then I lay on the bed and rang Neil.

  ‘I always thought the killer was someone close to home,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, right. You thought it was Patrick O’Leary right up to the end.’

  ‘Did you hear about Patrick and Venetia?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘They ran away to get married. They were trying to get to Gretna Green. The Scottish police picked them up at a Travelodge in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Isn’t Gretna Green in Dumfriesshire?’

  ‘Yes. They hadn’t quite worked out how to get there. And it was quite easy to find them because they’d checked in their location on Facebook.’

  ‘Idiots,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well,’ said Neil. ‘Young love and all that.’

  I was almost asleep by now but I had just enough energy to ring Mum and tell her where I was. She asked if I’d seen the Loch Ness Monster. I told her that he was on holiday.

  Clare

  Harbinder and I walk across the white sand of the bay. It’s a beautiful morning, the sea sparkling like a picture postcard, the mountains dark in the background.

  ‘I feel so guilty,’ I say. ‘I didn’t even recognise Ty from Hythe, though now I remember Ella saying something, when we had that row, about the barman giving me the eye.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ says Harbinder. ‘You couldn’t have known.’

  ‘I didn’t like Georgie going out with Ty,’ I say, ‘but only because he was so much older. I actually thought she was safe with him. Jesus.’

  ‘On a more important subject,’ says Harbinder, ‘is Herbert going to be all right?’

  ‘The vet says he’ll be fine. Luckily the knife didn’t pierce any vital organs. He’s got nine lives like a cat.’

  ‘He was pretty brave to go for Ty like that.’

  ‘Yes. He adores Georgie. He’d defend her with his life. Both of us.’ I have to stop to wipe my eyes.

  ‘Ty had some pretty deep bites on his arms when we took him into custody,’ says Harbinder.

  ‘Good,’ I say.

  ‘How’s Georgie feeling about Ty?’ says Harbinder.

  ‘She’s terribly shocked,’ I say, ‘but this morning she was going on about the need to forgive him. I can’t say that I’m ready for that yet.’ Georgie had been taken to hospital last night but she had no physical wounds and had been discharged after a few hours. This morning she was talking about forgiveness and redemption, ‘otherwise he wins, don’t you see?’ Grandma, who had been locked in the sitting room with me and listened to me screaming when I thought my daughter was being murdered upstairs, was similarly serene, cooking us all a huge breakfast. ‘You’ll need the energy.’ It’s funny, Grandma and Georgie are alike. I’d never noticed it before.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, ‘it was Ty who looked after Herbert when he hurt his paw that time, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Harbinder. ‘Remember, deep down, Ty persuaded himself that he was doing what you wanted. He knew how much you loved Herbert. I’m sure you never criticised him in your diary.’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I say. ‘It was all about how much I loved him, how precious he was to me. God, I feel awful. Like I was writing a hit list.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t,’ says Harbinder. ‘You didn’t ask Ty to go on some killing spree on your behalf. And you never meant anyone to read your diaries.’

  ‘What about The Stranger?’ I say. ‘Ty must have read that. It’s where he got the quote and . . . and the way he killed Ella and Rick.’ Harbinder told me last night about the way Rick had died.

  ‘He got that from Georgie. She’s obsessed with the story and Ty apparently found a copy of it in her room. We found lots of books in the factory, including The Woman in White, Georgie’s copy of The Tempest and several editions of The Stranger. It can be a dangerous thing, reading too much.’

  I don’t know if she’s joking or not.

  ‘We think he got the candle and the potpourri idea from Georgie and her friends. He t
ook Georgie’s black obsidian stone too. We don’t know why. Apparently Bryony Hughes gave the stones to all the members of the creative writing group. For protection. I saw one in her office when I interviewed her.’

  Last night Georgie had finally opened up about Bryony Hughes, babbling away about how she was a white witch, about how she taught Georgie to exorcise spirits. I make a mental note to find out more and to stop her attending the meetings at the sixth-form college. But it also makes me sad to think that, all this time, she has been reading and writing fiction and I never knew about it.

  ‘Georgie’s fingerprints were on the stone,’ says Harbinder casually. ‘That made us interested in her for a while.’

  ‘My God. Did you suspect her?’

  ‘Not really. But I found a blood-stained photo of Ella in her room. Turns out it was animal blood, we got the results back this morning. I think it must have been in Georgia’s pocket when we found Herbert and he’d cut his paw.’

  I remember Georgie holding Herbert in her arms as we sat at the vet’s. Our little hero dog.

  ‘I did suspect you for a while,’ says Harbinder. ‘You seemed more the type.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘But then we concentrated on Patrick O’Leary. He’d had a crush on Ella and had reason to resent Rick. We knew he’d been at Ella’s house on the night that she died. And then he disappeared, which is usually a sure sign of guilt. He’d sent a message to Natasha saying “Hell is empty”. His idea of a joke, apparently.’

  ‘He sent the same message to Georgie,’ I say. ‘Did you find Patrick and Venetia?’