by Phoebe Locke
‘Hey—’ Helen took a step forward but Sadie reached out and grabbed her hand, holding her back. Her eyes stayed on the figure though Marie did not seem to see it – she pulled herself up, looking down at her grazed and bleeding knee. A tear spilled out and trailed down her cheek and Sadie felt disappointed. Marie was not special at all. Marie was weak.
‘Better run along, Marie,’ Justine said, still smiling. ‘You should lock your bedroom door tonight, if you think that’ll save you.’
And Marie did not stay to argue. She turned and ran, the leaves scattering as she went.
Justine turned back to the others and shrugged. ‘We can’t all be special,’ she said, and from her pocket she pulled the knife. ‘We have to give him what he wants,’ she said to Sadie. ‘I know the exact right place.’
‘Is the Tall Man going to take Marie?’ Helen asked tearfully.
Justine shrugged. ‘She isn’t special any more.’ She glanced at both of them, her eyes settling on Sadie’s again. ‘The Tall Man takes daughters,’ she said, and Sadie felt her own lips mouth the words along with her. ‘But sometimes he needs help.’
As they walked through the woods, leaves shushing madly at their feet, the sound of a child laughing drifted through the trees towards them.
33
2016
The first sheet was cut out sentences and paragraphs, the newspaper yellowing. They overlapped each other, packing the page, and the effect in the bright white light of her phone was dizzying.
. . . survived by parents Debbie and David Weatherall, and older sister Lucy . . .
. . . Lucy Weatherall, sister of murdered toddler . . .
. . . joined in court by teenage sister, Lucy . . .
. . . Stacey Frederick, the youngest, held the child’s hand and sang . . .
. . . baby-killers, pure and simple . . .
She turned the page. She was afraid and didn’t understand and so she turned the page.
A single article, neatly clipped and pasted to the paper.
Anna Lou’s killers released
In a statement today, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that the so-called Westborough Witches will be given new identities. The three girls were found guilty of the murder of a toddler five years ago.
Two-year-old Anna Louise Weatherall was found dead in woodland near her home in Westborough in 1990, after going missing from a playground near her home. She had been stabbed twenty-seven times and her skull had been crushed. CCTV footage from the area led police to three local girls, aged 11–13.
A search of the girls’ homes found a bloodstained sock belonging to the child, along with a daisy hair clip. The girls told police that they were ‘just playing’ with the toddler but an unnamed school friend testified in court that the group had become ‘obsessed’ with an urban legend that involved making sacrifices to a satanic figure. The jury was shown photographic evidence of a ‘ritual’ they had carried out on the body of a cat found in the school field.
The eldest of the girls, Justine Jones, was described by a police psychologist in the dock as ‘a very angry girl’ with ‘a high IQ, and the power to manipulate’, while the youngest, Stacey, was described as ‘a dreamer; highly susceptible and very pliable but equally a persuasive and formidable personality’.
Now the Sun can exclusively reveal that all three of the girls have been released to the custody of their parents, and have been given new identities to protect them.
Meanwhile, Debbie and David Weatherall, along with their surviving daughter, Lucy, arrived in Manchester today to give a statement to the press. They said that they felt ‘sick to learn that our baby’s killers are free to start again, when she will never have that opportunity’.
There was a picture alongside that paragraph and Amber leaned closer, the phone almost touching the page. A man and a woman, both haggard-looking and dressed in black, and beside them, a moody-looking teenage girl, her blond hair cut in a weird bowl shape.
She looked very different – a nose job, definitely, but Amber thought there was more work there, fillers or some kind of reshaping, her face now more refined, more designed. And yet she was recognisable because Amber saw that same thing in her eyes, that thing that scared and repelled her and which suddenly she understood. The nakedness of her loss, her need.
Leanna. Leanna was Lucy Weatherall, sister of poor murdered kid Anna Louise.
Amber’s hands were damp with sweat as she turned the page. And there it was. A neat triptych, the pictures cut out carefully and now fading. The first a photo of a round-faced toddler, her fine hair clipped back from her face with a plastic daisy slide. Fat hands clutching a doll against her round middle, an uncertain smile on her face. And then an image cut from a newspaper: the body of a cat, splayed open on the grass. The picture was black and white and grainy, but she could see where the blood had seeped into the grass, where the fur and flesh had been unevenly hacked away.
And then the last photo, this one an old Polaroid. Four girls, skinny arms round each other, grinning at the camera in their crushed velvet dresses and their Doc Martens. The flash had bleached out their faces a bit, the photo sun-worn too, but her eyes were drawn to the smallest, the youngest. That face, so carefree and familiar. Stacey.
Sadie.
Mum.
She felt the breath on the back of her neck before she heard the floorboard creak.
‘I put that one in for you,’ Leanna said.
34
2018
They arrive in Scotland just after lunchtime. Amber, who seemed to sleep most of the way – though Greta, now, is never quite sure – is suddenly awake and alert, her leg crossed up under her, foot tapping against the seat. She scrolls through her phone, sunglasses still on. Greta, glancing sideways, notices how her eyes keep flicking to the window. She’s glad of Amber’s glasses – if Federica notices the nervous way their charge is watching the distance between them and the cottage disappear, she’ll almost certainly suggest they switch on a camera.
Greta managed to get some sleep too, in the end. But it was a restless sleep, dreams of herself naked from the waist down, a man stepping out of the shadows to lay cold fingers on her skin. Long, filthy nails piercing it, digging out handfuls of flesh. Hayley Miller holding her hand the whole time while a little girl swung her legs in the hotel chair beside her. Tom stepping out of the shadows, Tom knocking on the door.
Tom calling her name.
She’d jerked awake and he’d been holding out her phone, left charging on the dashboard.
‘Your dad’s calling.’
She hadn’t answered it in time, a voicemail left in her dad’s cool tones. Sorry to miss you. We are out now for dinner but perhaps you could call us tomorrow. We’d like to hear your voice. Perhaps it’s the hangover, the sour taste in her mouth, but the sound of his voice brought tears to her eyes. She follows Amber’s gaze to the fields and the hills beyond and tries not to think about what her parents might make of this film. She remembers a Christmas two years ago, she and Sebastian both free and able to fly back to Dearborn for the first time since he’d finished school. How she’d gone into the living room one day – a room they never used, all family dinners and TV time taking place in the basement her parents had converted into a den – and found, among the framed articles her brother had written from Kabul, Baghdad, Damascus, a review of My Parents Are Murderers from the Washington Post online. Printed out and trimmed and pasted on to the board backing of a chunky silver frame, hung in pride of place over the fire. The living room was a room for guests and there she and Sebastian were, their achievements laid out like rare treasures her parents couldn’t quite believe had come into their possession.
Federica hunches forward in her seat, the car slowing. ‘Is this the turning?’
Tom consults his phone. ‘Can’t get the map to update – no signal out here.’
‘Yeah, this is it.’ The tapping of Amber’s foot more rapid on the seat. ‘It’s like a mile up that way.’
Greta�
��s parents have never seen My Parents Are Murderers. If her brother has, he’s never mentioned it to her.
‘You doing OK, Amber?’ Federica’s voice heavy with faux-concern, though she is already turning to Tom, checking whether he has any of the equipment in the front with him.
Greta remembers a phone call she received from Danny Miller a year or so ago, his words thick with drink. ‘You made me say those things,’ he’d said. ‘I liked you and you got me to say those things that I didn’t mean to tell. Now everywhere I go everyone knows my face, they know about my mom and dad and what they did. They treat me like I’m a freak. How am I ever gonna get a job, Greta? How am I ever gonna get away from it all?’
The car thumps over the rutted road. Trees enclose them, blocking out the sun. Amber’s head snaps to the side, watching the woods pass. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I’m fine.’ Greta wonders if she’s the only one who hears the way her voice trembles.
She thinks again of Tom last night. You’re starting to feel too much for her. I can see it. Later, after the fourth glass of wine but before the first kiss, she had called him out on it again, irritated and afraid. What’s so wrong with feeling anyway? Isn’t that what makes a film great? Caring about it? He’d shaken his head, looked away. It’s not the film I’m worried about. It’s what it’s going to do to you. And then his eyes had returned to hers. That family is dangerous. It’s not like it was with the Millers. There’s nothing worth saving here.
She glances at Amber as the car slows, Federica swearing as she tries to navigate a steep turning off the main track. She misjudges as she tries to shift down a gear, the engine whining. Amber is still watching the woods through the window, her bottom lip bleached white as her teeth push into it. Nothing worth saving here. It’s what it’s going to do to you.
The Tall Man takes daughters.
‘I’ve got no signal either,’ Luca says, waving his phone around above him as Federica slows the car to a stop. ‘Shit, I hope Elke doesn’t need to call. Is there Wi-Fi in there?’
‘There are patches of signal in the woods,’ Amber says, not turning away from the window. ‘If you go in deep enough.’
Luca glances nervously at her. ‘Right. Yeah.’ As Federica turns off the engine he slides the door open and wanders back towards the track, phone in the air again. His back to the woods.
Tom hefts the seat forward to let them out, his eyes meeting Greta’s as Amber brushes past him.
‘You OK?’ he asks, and she nods.
‘You?’
‘I’ve felt better,’ he says, grinning. ‘At least I got an early night, eh?’
She flushes, glancing at Amber ahead of them on the gravel drive. ‘Yeah . . . I’m sorry about that—’
‘Greta.’ He cuts her off, the brim of his cap casting a section of his face in total shadow under the sun overhead. ‘Don’t worry about it. We were both wasted.’
‘Yeah.’ She tries to smile, tries not to remember his hands sliding her jeans down, the way his T-shirt caught in his mouth as she tugged it off. Tries not to imagine what it might have been like to wake up with him this morning, whisky fug lifted and daylight flooding in, all her flaws exposed.
And then, stepping around the corner of the drive, she takes in the cottage for the first time. The loch is wide and calm, a few houses dotted on its far shore. On this side she can see only wilderness; trees and gorse knotted together, vines rambling up the cottage’s faded walls. It’s no longer rented out, she read that somewhere. The owners can’t sell it either. Not so much the crime – if anything, that’s of interest to a certain type of buyer – but because of the market. She thinks idly that she would like to live here, so far from anything else, bricks being pulled under by earth. The house slowly shrouded with green.
And then she sees Amber, looking up at it too. She is very still, rigid – if Greta touched her, she thinks she’d feel like steel. Fists clenched tightly by her sides, lips pressed together and glasses hiding as much of her face as possible. Federica walks slowly around her, tiger stalking its prey, and when Tom rounds the corner with the camera, Federica moves smoothly out of shot. The gravel crackles under his feet, the sunlight flashing on the camera lens.
Amber considers the house for a minute or two and then, sliding her sunglasses on to the top of her head, she looks back at the camera and at Greta beyond it.
‘It’s smaller than I remembered,’ she says. And then she turns on her heel and goes inside.
35
2016
‘I put that one in for you.’
Amber scrambled away from the words, the hot sour breath on her cheek. She lost her balance and clung to the banister, slipping a couple of steps as she turned to look Leanna in the face.
‘What is this?’ Her voice sounded strange in her own ears – young and afraid. But the diary had slid from her lap as she caught herself, was now thudding down the stairs. She heard it skid across the floor at the bottom.
‘I knew you’d want to know.’ Leanna clasped her hands in front of her, still kneeling on the top step. ‘You are so clever, Amber. So suspicious, too. You aren’t how I expected you to be.’
‘That was you,’ Amber said. ‘That was you in the picture. It was your sister they—’
‘It was, I’m afraid,’ Leanna said, and Amber didn’t wait to hear the rest. She pulled herself up and stumbled down the stairs, bare feet slipping on the wood.
‘Amber, stop!’
But Amber didn’t stop, didn’t even turn to see Leanna hurry down the stairs after her. She reached the hallway and ran for the door, wrenching the security chain off so quickly that she ripped a nail in half. She threw the door open as Leanna made a grab for her, her fingers snatching at the fabric of Amber’s T-shirt.
‘Amber, please—’
Amber pulled herself free, the T-shirt tearing, and ran out into the night.
Miles couldn’t sleep; he hadn’t slept at all. He sat in his usual place on the sofa, listening to Sadie pacing around the floor above him, willing her to lie down. He pressed his fingertips against his closed eyes, trying to force back the headache throbbing there.
Someone was watching them. Sadie had been right and Miles knew he should not be surprised.
It was almost 3 a.m. and Miles got up and went to the window for the twentieth or thirtieth time. There – stepping more fully into the circle of amber streetlight until he could almost make out the face, just hidden from him by the shadow of a hood as rain continued to bat against the window. And then gone again, melting back into the night.
It was surprising (it had always surprised him), the way the rage flooded through him after hours of unease and fear. His feet were moving before he even realised it, anger burning in the back of his throat. He looked around for a weapon – something filmic and satisfying; a baseball bat or a poker, neither an object they owned – and then he was in the hallway, heading for the door. He yanked it open and stalked out into the moonlit road.
This was not him. He did not behave this way. And yet it felt right, this rage: it felt like a homecoming.
He plunged into the darkness between the streetlights, a beat pulsing blindly behind his eyes where the headache once was – and grabbed hold of fabric, flesh, surprising himself. He heaved the figure against the side of a parked car, out in the light. There was the sound of jagged breathing though he was no longer sure if it was his own.
He pulled back the hood.
A man around his own age, dark hair slicked back, uneven stubble edging his jaw. His eyes dancing nervously across Miles’s face and the empty street. ‘Let go of me,’ he said.
The rage was still pounding through him, the words forced out. ‘Who are you?’
‘You can call me Leo. And I said let go of me.’
‘You’ve been watching my house. My wife.’ But Miles released him, hands shaking.
‘Yeah.’ Leo straightened up, smoothing down his top. ‘I have.’
‘Why?’
‘I was asked to.
’
Miles’s heart kicked up a gear, blood thundering in his ears. ‘By who?’
Leo smiled, just a little. ‘I think you know. She’s sent you emails too.’
SomeoneSpecial. Miles reached out to steady himself on a parked car. He forced himself to speak, wondering when the rage had abandoned him. ‘Who is she? What does she want from me? From us?’ Everything was tumbling down, he could feel it. It was over. The wall had been broken, their ghosts flooding in.
‘It’s not what she wants, it’s what she has.’ Leo looked around again, pulled his hood back up over his head. ‘I’m not here to hurt you, I came to warn you. Amber – she’s in danger.’
The adrenaline surged through him again, the street beginning to spin. ‘What have you done to my daughter?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. She told me to watch her, to find out about her. About all of you. I never thought it’d go this far. I thought it was about Sadie, I never thought she’d do something to Amber.’
‘Amber’s not here.’ Hands numb and frantic, he searched his pockets for his phone. He would call the police, call his daughter.
‘You don’t get it.’ Leo stepped forward, his breath malted and foul. ‘She’s with her. She’s got her. She sent me this message this morning, saying she didn’t need me any more. Said it was almost over.’ He shakes his head. ‘She said the debt was about to be paid.’
Understanding went through Miles like a knife. ‘Leanna? Leanna is behind this?’
Leo was already backing away. ‘You need to find Amber. You need to warn her.’
‘Who is she?’ Miles reached out and grabbed hold of him again, suddenly afraid that he might disappear, fade back into the shadows. ‘Is she one of them? One of the Westborough girls?’
‘You knew.’ Leo’s face twisted as he pulled himself free. ‘She thought you did but I didn’t believe it.’ He spat the words out. ‘How could you marry that?’
‘You don’t know her.’ Miles was surprised at how steady his voice became. The hope draining from him. ‘That isn’t her. She isn’t Stacey any more.’ I thought I’d saved her, he wanted to add. I thought I could. The great Miles Banner with his degrees, his published papers on deviant behaviour and its roots, on the social rehabilitation of criminals. With his young wife, his first true love. His first case study.
