In the Dark

by Cara Hunter

  ‘Is it just the two of you?’ says Sexton warily. ‘I thought you said they’d all be back in today?’

  Owens comes up to the door. ‘Don’t you worry, Mr Sexton. They’re on their way. Just popped into the builders’ merchants to pick up some materials. I came on ahead so we can take another look at that wee problem in the cellar.’

  ‘Didn’t look like a fucking wee problem to me,’ says Sexton, but he turns and unlocks the door.

  Inside, the house reeks of damp. Yet another sodding reason why he wanted to get it done in the summer.

  Owens stomps down the hall to the kitchen and tugs open the cellar door. He flips the switch, but nothing happens.

  ‘Kenny!’ he calls back. ‘You got that light, mate?’

  The lad turns up with a large yellow plastic torch. Owens flips it on and trains the beam up at the light socket. There is no bulb.

  ‘OK,’ he says, ‘let’s see what we have here, then.’

  He starts down the steps, but suddenly there’s a crack and a shout and the sound of clattering.

  ‘What?’ says Sexton, leaning forward. ‘What the fuck was that?’

  He stops at the threshold and looks down. Owens is halfway down, on his back, clinging to what’s left of the wooden steps.

  ‘Fuck,’ he says, his chest heaving. ‘Fuck – down there – look.’

  The torch has fallen all the way to the bottom and the cone of light is glaring across the floor. The glitter of a dozen beady eyes in the dark, a scuttle of feet.

  Rats.

  But that’s not what Owens means.

  She’s lying at the base of what was once the stairs. One leg twisted at an impossible angle. Long hair, now turning greenish, thin arms, black nail varnish. She’s young. And possibly pretty once, but it’s impossible to tell.

  She no longer has a face.

  * * *

  * * *

  Daily Mail

  21st December 2017

  VERDICT IN THE ‘TWISTED SISTERS’ CASE

  Vicky Neale sentenced for ‘cruel and unusual’ scam

  Still no charges in the murder of Hannah Gardiner

  By Peter Croxford

  ‘Cellar scammer’ Vicky Neale was sentenced to six years in prison at Oxford Crown Court yesterday, after pleading guilty to attempting to defraud pensioner William Harper by accusing him of false imprisonment and rape. The court heard how Neale and her older sister, Tricia Walker, tortured and humiliated the old man, burning him several times on the gas cooker in the house, and planting pornography to incriminate him. Passing sentence, Judge Theobald Wotton QC condemned the 19-year-old teenager’s behaviour as ‘cruel and unusual’, and a ‘heartless and self-serving attempt to prey upon a frail and vulnerable old man who had done no harm to you’.

  Speaking after the verdict, Superintendent John Harrison of Thames Valley Police said he was pleased that justice had been done, and confirmed that the police are preparing a file to submit to the Crown Prosecution Service in relation to the 2015 murder of BBC journalist Hannah Gardiner. Though many commentators doubt it will now be possible to determine the exact extent of Neale’s involvement in that crime, after the discovery, two months ago, of Tricia Walker’s partly decomposed body in the cellar of the house next door to William Harper’s. The gruesome remains were found by the owner of the empty property, and police believe Walker was squatting there after absconding from custody by inducing a miscarriage. The postmortem concluded that she had fallen and broken her leg on the dangerous cellar stairs, after suffering blood loss and possible dizziness. The coroner’s verdict was accidental death, due to dehydration. Only one mystery remains: what happened to the priceless Japanese ornament Walker stole from William Harper and wore around her neck? The silver chain was found broken on the floor, but there was no sign of the ornament itself, and an exhaustive search by the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit is believed to have found no trace of it.

  Despite the fact that no charges have yet been brought in relation to the killing of Hannah Gardiner, some details of the terrifying circumstances of her death have since emerged. Tricia Walker is thought to have planned the murder meticulously, stripping and tying up Mrs Gardiner’s body to make it look like the work of a sexual predator. Vicky Neale has apparently denied any direct involvement in Mrs Gardiner’s death, insisting that she only helped Walker cover up the killing because she was completely under her control, and feared for her own life if she did not comply.

  Criminal psychologist Laurence Finch, consultant with the hit TV series Crimes That Shook Britain, says this is a classic example of a so-called folie à deux crime, committed by two people working together: ‘In cases like that there is almost always one dominant partner, but it’s more common for that to be a man imposing his will on a female partner, usually a wife or girlfriend. Look at the Moors Murderers, for instance. It’s the fact that this particular killing involved two women – and two sisters – that makes it so unusual.’

  Dr Finch also believes Tricia Walker was a rare example of a female psychopath: ‘We’re used to men committing crimes like this, but there are women who are equally capable, if the right triggers are there. Many potential psychopaths go through their whole lives without committing a crime, because they never find themselves in a situation where they can’t get what they want. As long as they’re not being thwarted or obstructed in any way these people can appear perfectly normal – perhaps rather manipulative but in many cases extremely charming. As one of the leading experts in the field once put it, a psychopath will show you a good time, but you’ll be left paying a very heavy price.’

  389 comments

  Danielaking07

  In my opinion Hannah Gardiner’s husband and son are the real victims of those two vicious cows. That little boy is growing up without a mother – that’s what I call a ‘heavy price’.

  Zandra_the_sandra

  It’s the old man I feel sorry for. How many more old people are going to be abandoned in their own homes before enough money is made available for social workers to do a proper job?

  GloriousGloria

  What I want to know is how two girls from a perfectly nice family can turn into such monsters? As far as I know they weren’t abused or anything?

  Otter_mindy1776

  If you ask me, the internet has a lot to answer for. Bet they even took selfies of themselves abusing that poor old git.

  FireSalamander33

  At least Vicky’s little boy will get a chance at a decent start in life now. I heard he’s being adopted and Social Services have nicknamed him Brandon because of his dark hair. It means ‘little raven’. That’s so lovely, in’t it?

  Epilogue

  The building is cold, despite the summer sunshine outside. It has the chill of somewhere not inhabited. The damp of no body heat, no warm breath. But that’s an illusion, because sitting in one corner, among the empty cans of Coke, the half-eaten burger and the bag of sanitary towels, there’s a girl. She’s leaning against the wall, a jacket wrapped around her like a blanket. The jacket is navy. Quilted.

  The door opens slowly and now someone is standing there, the face in shadow against the sudden glare of sunlight behind.

  Tricia tries to get up, but grimaces. She’s clearly in pain.

  Vicky looks at her. ‘They said you were losing the baby.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the sooner I got rid of it the better. I only got pregnant because I wanted Rob. I didn’t want the bloody kid. Just my luck the sad bastard was firing blanks.’

  Vicky says nothing.

  ‘What did you tell them?’ says Tricia. ‘The police?’

  ‘Nothing. They don’t know I’m here. I got bail.’

  ‘How did you know where to find me?’

  ‘I know how you think. I know you. The real you. Better than anyone.’

&nbs
p; Tricia sneers. ‘But all those people, they don’t know you, do they, Vicky? You lied to them.’

  ‘So did you. And you lied to me. I nearly died because of what you did. I would have died.’

  Vicky closes the door behind her with a sudden bang; the sheets of newspaper on the floor shift in the gust.

  ‘That Inspector – Fawley. He showed me what they found on your phone. Those websites you were looking at. About claiming the money.’

  Tricia shifts her position a little. ‘Yeah, well, we needed to start working out what we were going to do, didn’t we?’

  ‘But it wasn’t we, was it?’ Vicky’s lips are trembling but there is something fierce and unforgiving in her eyes. ‘It was just you. It wasn’t just looking at stuff on the internet either – you emailed a law firm. You said you wanted to know how much you’d get if you sued someone for killing your sister.’

  There’s a silence.

  ‘It wasn’t a mistake, was it, Tricia? You wanted me dead. And you were going to say Harper did it.’

  They stare at each other. Openly hostile.

  ‘Where is it?’ says Vicky, her voice hard now.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know damn well what I’m talking about. Hand it over.’

  Tricia’s eyes narrow. ‘Why the hell should I?’

  ‘Just give it to me and I’m out of here and you can go. Or –’

  ‘Or?’

  The question hangs in the air.

  Unanswered.

  Acknowledgements

  There’s a wonderful group of people now on ‘team Fawley’, all of whom have helped me make, shape and refine this novel. Most notably my fabulous, patient and supportive agent, Anna Power, and my two editors at Penguin – the equally delightful and insightful Katy Loftus and Sarah Stein. I also want to thank my fantastic PR teams, both in the UK – Poppy North, Rose Poole and Annie Hollands – and in the US – Ben Petrone and Shannon Kelly.

  I also want to say a very big thank you to my expert advisers – Joey Giddings, CSI extraordinaire, who also drew up the crime scene sketches on pages 45–6; Nicholas Syfret QC for his advice on the legal side; and Detective Inspector Andy Thompson for invaluable help on police procedure. Also Dr Ann Robinson and Nikki Ralph. I have tried to make the story as accurate as possible, but as in all works of fiction there are a few places where I have exercised a degree of artistic licence. For example, the procedures involved in questioning vulnerable adults are very complex, and I do not pretend to have captured every single detail 100 per cent. Needless to say, if there are any errors or inaccuracies these are down to me alone.

  Thanks too to my ‘first readers’ – my husband, Simon, and my dear friends Stephen, Elizabeth, Sarah and Peter. And also to my superb copy editor, Karen Whitlock.

  And finally it seems odd to thank a city, but I couldn’t have written this book without drawing on the special ‘genius of the place’ of Oxford. It’s an endlessly inspiring and surprising town, and I’m very lucky to live there. However, needless to say, my characters are entirely the products of my imagination, and not based on any real individuals. Many of the places are my inventions too, though some are not. The Wittenham Clumps are real, as are the Cuckoo Pen, the Money Pit and the legend of the raven. The Iron Age remains of a man, a child and part of a dismembered female have indeed been discovered at the Clumps in recent years, and one theory is that the female was part of a human sacrifice. But there has never, to my knowledge, been a proposal to build a housing estate in the area.

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