by BL Pearce
“Maybe it’s the thought of so many lost souls buried here for years.”
The path disappeared completely.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Jo asked.
Rob tried to gauge where they were. He consulted the map in his head.
“I think it’s that way.” He pointed towards the tangled mesh of trees.
“Well, we can’t get through that, we’ll have to go around.”
The veered to the right where it wasn’t so overgrown and picked their way around the matted foliage until there was space to walk between the trees again.
“Here we go.” They’d looped back on their previous bearing.
“It can’t be much further.” At least he bloody hoped not. A large drip fell down the back of his neck. This was not the day to go rambling.
Ten minutes later, they emerged into the clearing.
“Well done!” She laughed, recognising the burial ground from the photographs.
“Thank God. I thought I’d got us totally lost.”
Jo walked around, studying the five open graves, the mounds of dirt discarded beside them. The police cordon had been taken down, but it was obvious something sinister had occurred here. It resembled a seen from a Zombie apocalypse movie.
“Where was Arina buried?” she asked.
“To the left, just beyond those trees.”
“So not in the clearing?”
“No, she was under that huge oak.”
“I wonder why he decided to bury her there, when he buried the others in the clearing.” She glanced up at the sky. It was barely visible between the overhanging branches. Slithers of grey beyond the pine.
“Maybe he ran out of space.” The clearing wasn’t very big.
Jo peered back the way they’d come. “Do you think he came this way? From the church?”
“It’s a long way to carry a body. It’s more likely he pulled up in a vehicle of some sort. The road is less than a mile that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction. “This clearing is actually fairly isolated. It’s not even on a map of the common. You’d have to be a local to know it was here.”
“Either way, he would have had to carry the bodies a fair distance,” Jo said. “He’d have to be strong to do that. Unless they were alive when he brought them here.”
Rob shook his head. “The way they were posed, the sheeting, the clips in their hair... I don’t think he did that here.”
“I agree. It’s more likely he carried them, already prepared for burial.”
“Tony said he was protecting them from something.”
Jo studied him. “From what? Their parents? The sexual or physical abuse?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. What else could it be?”
Thunder rumbled in the background. He glanced up. “It’s going to bucket down.”
Jo wrapped her arms around him and they hugged. In the middle of the clearing. It didn’t seem nearly so creepy anymore.
“We’ll find him,” she said, breaking away. “We’ll get the bastard who did this.”
43
“Haven’t they been through enough?” growled Rob as they stared at the flatscreen television mounted on the squad room wall. It showed a live news broadcast of Chrissy Macdonald’s parents being interviewed.
“Turn it up,” someone called.
Jenny, who was closest to the remote, increased the volume.
“We’re just glad to have some closure,” Mrs Macdonald was saying. “Now we can grieve properly for poor Chrissy.”
Her husband stood beside her staring at his feet.
Rob clenched his jaw.
“Makes you sick, doesn’t it?” Jo came up beside him. “Knowing what he’s done. Knowing what they all did.”
Rob gestured to the TV. “What does this achieve? Nothing. It’s only going to bring them more heartache. Now they’re going to see their daughter’s face every time they open a newspaper.”
“Are there any leads in the case?” the reporter, a slick brunette was asking.
“Nothing we know of,” she replied.
Rob rolled his eyes. Not an hour ago they’d issued a press release divulging the identities of the bodies found in Bisley Wood and here they were hounding the parents. Typical.
Evan came up to him. “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to drive through to Dorking tomorrow morning and see if I can catch Mrs Macdonald while her husband’s out?”
“Absolutely, good idea.”
Circumstantial evidence, hearsay, guesswork. They didn’t have anything that actually proved the girls were abused. A fact that the Detective Chief Superintendent pointed out to him in his office after the broadcast.
“Get some DNA Rob, something finite that we can act on. All this supposition is getting us nowhere. So what if they were all abused? Unless we can prove it, we can’t use it.”
“It does show a connection between the victims, sir,” he pointed out.
“We need to find the killer, not more dead girls. Jesus wept.” He paced up and down his office. “I’m not even going to tell you what the Commissioner said.”
Rob sat down wearily.
“They want to send in someone from Major Crimes to take over the investigation. It’s only your reputation that’s holding this taskforce together, Rob. I can’t keep the wolves at bay for much longer.”
Shit.
The last thing they needed was some bigwig waltzing in and taking over the case. It would be like starting from scratch.
“The case is too complex,” he said. “It would take anyone days to catch up, and I don’t care how experienced they are.”
Lawrence shrugged. “Then find something, Rob. And find it soon. To be honest, I’m tempted to hand this entire mess over to someone else.”
“You don’t mean that, sir?”
He grunted. “Just find me something concrete to tell the Commissioner. That way we can all keep our jobs.”
The Shepherd watched as Chrissy’s parents were interviewed.
What hypocrites!
How could they stand there and talk about grieving their daughter when they’re the ones who’d made her life a misery.
You’re the reason she had to die, he hissed at the screen. You, with your filthy urges and animalistic desires.
She’d never have sought him out, otherwise.
He seethed as the journalist asked leading questions about the investigation, about the detective in charge. DCI Rob Miller. Except he was never the one giving the press releases. It was always that other bloke, the good-looking mixed-race one. The type of image the police force wanted to portray.
He’d glimpsed DCI Miller at the burial ground so he had a clear image of the man hunting him. Tall, purposeful, with a determined walk. He’d be a worthy adversary.
But he wouldn’t catch him for he had the Lord on his side.
He was untouchable.
Guided by the path of the righteous, he led the little children to safety. He ended their pain and suffering. He was their salvation.
Switching off the television, he wondered if he had time to go to church and light a candle for the dead before his next appointment.
44
Jo left for Manchester early the next morning.
As the train pulled out of London Euston station, she leaned back in her chair and watched the tall concrete apartment and corporate buildings, mostly covered in scaffolding, whiz by.
London was constantly changing. More buildings going up where others had been torn down. Urban regeneration. Or perhaps they were just trying to hide the decay that was already there, patch it up so nobody noticed.
Was that what her mother had done? Put a bandage over Rachel’s abuse, hidden it away from the world so no one would know?
She’d been ten at the time, too young to notice those things. The lustful glances, the fearful looks, the withdrawal and depression.
Rachel had always been so vivacious, so popular. Was it possible she’d been harbouring a deep, dark secret?
&
nbsp; She spent the two-and-a-half-hour journey reading through more of her sister’s case files. The ones she could fit into her bag, anyway. Witness statements by her sister’s friends.
“I didn’t see her that weekend. She said she had to study.”
“There was a party, but Rachel didn’t come.”
“No, she didn’t have a boyfriend, although there was this weird guy she used to hang out with. I don’t know his name, he didn’t go to our school.”
Who was that guy?
Jo had a dim memory of a slim, geeky boy with glasses who lived in the neighbourhood. Michael? Was that it? He used to walk Rachel home sometimes.
She fiddled through the file. Damn, she didn’t have the right one.
Hauling out her phone, she rang Rob.
“Miss me already?”
She smiled. “Yes, but that’s not why I rang.”
He chuckled. “What’s up?”
“I need a favour. Remember that kid my sister used to know, the last person to see her alive? Could you look up his name for me? I’ve left that particular folder in the incident room. It should be on the table, I was looking at it yesterday.”
“Sure, hang on.”
She listened to the sound of him rifling through the folders on the table where she sat. She’d left them in a neat pile in case anyone else needed access to them.
“Okay, got it. The statement of Michael Robertson.”
“Michael! I thought that was it. Thanks, Rob.”
“Is that all you need? You don’t want me to send you a photo of it?”
“No, it was just his name. Thanks, Rob. I’ll call you later.”
They signed off.
Michael Robertson.
Using her phone, she Googled him, but several hundred came up. Facebook. Linkedin. Twitter.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. That wasn’t going to work.
She tried Michael Robertson Manchester, which narrowed it down some, but still provided far too many to read through. Why’d he have to have such a common name? She didn’t even know what he looked like. There was no picture of him in the file, and her twenty year old memory was fuzzy, at best.
The statements by Rachel’s friends were telling in themselves. Why had Miss Popularity suddenly shunned all her friends?
Not going out. Studying.
That didn’t sound at all like the Rachel she knew.
And then there was this boy. This nerdy guy who nobody knew. Why was her sister hanging around with him?
She leaned back and closed her eyes.
Hopefully, her mother would have the answers.
Rob stared at the witness statement. Michael Robertson. The last person to see Rachel Maguire alive. He also Googled him, but like Jo, realised his mistake when thousands of results returned in a nanosecond.
He typed Michael Robertson into the criminal database. It took longer than Google’s giant search engine, but eventually returned two results. Neither were particularly enlightening.
The first entry was of an eighteen year old arrested for breaking and entering. He glanced at the date. Two weeks ago.
Moving on to the next one. Michael Robertson, sixteen, cautioned for getting into a fight at school. Let off with a warning.
He wrote the name on a post-it note.
“Where are you now, Michael,” he murmured, as he stuck it to the table where DS Jenny Bird sat.
The neon blue digits on the squad-room clock said it was nearly seven. He had another hour or so before people began arriving.
Nicking the flip chart from next door, he wrote all seven victims’ names down the left side. Next to them he wrote what he knew about their injuries.
Rosie had a broken arm, Angie was sexually abused, as was Anna Dewbury and Lucy Chang. All three were underage.
Chrissy and Rosie’s bodies were too badly degraded to be able to tell.
What about Rachel? Since her body had never been discovered, there was no way to tell. Unless Jo’s mother could shed some light.
A burly shadow caught his eye. DCS Lawrence strode across the floor towards his office. The Chief Superintendent prided himself on being the first person in the office, and he wouldn’t like that Rob had beaten him to it.
Sure enough, two minutes later the DCS’s solid frame appeared in the doorway.
“Getting an early start, Rob?”
“Jo left for Manchester this morning, so I thought I’d come in while it’s quiet and go over everything again.”
“Good idea,” he said. “Find a suspect yet?”
“Not yet, sir,” he grimaced.
Lawrence gave him a hard look before turning away. “I’m counting on you, Rob.” He marched back to his office.
What they needed was some DNA. The two victims most likely to yield any were Angie Nolan, who’d only been buried for ten months, and Anna Dewbury, whose body had been discovered within a day or two of her death.
Knowing he was in for a bollocking, he called Liz Kramer’s direct line.
“Don’t tell me you’ve found another dead teenager?” she barked into the phone.
“No, nothing like that,” he said, putting her mind at ease. “Just something I wanted to ask you.”
“Anything that isn’t a dead body can wait until I’ve got some clothes on.”
And she hung up.
Rob chuckled, despite himself.
“Right, what is it?” she said when she rang back twenty minutes later. Rob heard her indicator going and knew she was in her car on the way to the mortuary.
“The youngest victim, Angie Nolan,” he began. “You mentioned she had some flesh under her fingernails. Did you ever find out who it belonged to?”
“I sent it to the lab,” she said. “As far as I know, they haven’t emailed through the results. I’ll chase them up, but there’s a backlog at the moment.”
With six bodies to process, Rob wasn’t surprised.
“Please. I’m desperate, Liz. We need a lead.”
“I understand, Rob. I’ll see what I can do.”
He looked up the friend of Chrissy Macdonald. Daisy, her name was. Her mother had said they were inseparable. Chrissy had been fourteen when she was murdered, and Lisa thought she’d been in the ground for at least three years judging by the state of her body, which put Daisy at seventeen or eighteen now.
He dialled her home phone number, aware that it may have changed. He didn’t need permission to speak to her, but he thought it best to go through her mother, if possible.
A woman answered the phone, her voice groggy. Most of the country hadn’t woken up yet.
“This is DCI Miller from Richmond Police Station. I’m sorry to bother you so early, but I was wondering if I could speak to your daughter, Daisy, in connection with a friend of hers, Chrissy Macdonald.”
“Chrissy, goodness,” murmured the woman. “There’s a name I haven’t heard for a while. Yes, I’ll see if she’s up.”
Rob heard her climbing the stairs and pictured her going to wake her daughter. Low murmurings, an exclamation of some sort, and then a sleepy voice said, “Hello?”
“Sorry to bother you, Daisy,” he said. “I’m the detective looking into Chrissy’s death and I needed to ask you some questions. Would that be okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you tell me if Chrissy was acting like herself in the days or weeks leading up to her disappearance?”
She hesitated, then he heard her say, “It’s alright, mum. I got this.”
The sound of a door closing.
“Hi,” she sounded breathless.
“Do you need me to repeat the question?” he asked.
“No. Um. Chrissy was a bit sad before she disappeared. She wasn’t herself. She hadn’t been for a while.”
“What do you mean?” His heart thumped in his chest.
“I don’t know how to explain it. She was just down, you know? She didn’t want to do anything or go anywhere. There was this guy she was seeing, Raff, but she dumped him to
o.”
“Did you talk to her about it? Did she say what was wrong?”
“No, not really. She said she had issues at home. Her father was a bully. I remember going over there once and he cornered me in the kitchen. He creeped me out.”
There it was again. Suggestions, suppositions, but still no damn proof.
“Did Chrissy keep a diary?” he asked. Maybe there was some record of her father’s abuse.
“No, she would have told me. I think she was afraid of him. She’d stay at my house until her mother rang, telling her to go home.”
“Do you know if she told anyone else about her problems at home? A councillor perhaps, or a teacher?”
“Oh, yeah. There was someone. I can’t remember who. She said she’d told an adult about it and they were going to sort it. I think she trusted him.”
“Him?”
“Yeah, it was a man. I don't know who.”
“You didn’t meet him?”
“God, no. It was private. Chrissy only told me ‘cos I was her best friend.”
“Daisy, do you know how she contacted this person? Was it through the school? Or a church group, something like that?”
Daisy laughed. “Church, no way. I think she called a number, like Childline or something.”
Tessa Parvin’s words echoed in his head.
I saw a flyer for one of those children's charities at the library...
They went over a few of the details again, then he told Daisy she’d been extremely helpful.
“I heard there’s going to be a vigil tonight,” she said shyly. “In Bisley, wherever that is.”
“Yes, are you going?” he asked.
“Definitely. My boyfriend’s going to take me. Will you be there?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Okay,” she said. “See you later, I guess.”
“Bye, Daisy.”
45
Jo drove into the Lavender Hill Nursing Home parking lot and shivered. Seeing her mother always unsettled her, but this time it was different. This time they needed to have a talk. A proper talk. She only hoped her mother was ‘with it’ enough to remember.
