A Dark and Secret Place Read online

  Heather shook her head. “I’ve not read all the letters, but in the ones I’ve seen, they don’t talk about him killing anyone. But I mean, what do I know? Did I even know her at all? This man, currently serving life for chopping women up into bits, apparently knows a whole different side to my mum I’ve never seen.” Heather picked up her hot mug of tea and put it back down again. “She must have known him while he was killing those women, but was she aware of what he was doing? I’ve no idea. Plus, I don’t have any of her letters. Who knows what she was asking him? I mean, did he even know she had a family? A husband? Did my dad know what she was up to?” She half laughed, feeling abruptly sick again. “Oh god, was my mum one of those mad women who gets fixated on prisoners because they think they can change them?”

  “Heather, I don’t know what to say.”

  “And then there’s the note she left behind. To you both. The monsters in the wood? I mean, I thought that was weird enough before I found the letters, and now …”

  There was a second’s silence. Heather could hear a clock ticking in the hallway. She shook her head. Spilling it all out to Nikki only seemed to be making it more unbelievable.

  “And he’s in the news now? What’s happened?”

  Nikki brought up one of the more reputable news sites on her laptop and pushed it toward Heather.

  “An old lady found the body in a field in Lancashire, or at least most of the body. It had been dismembered and placed inside a tree. It’s everything the Red Wolf used to do, except that the Red Wolf has been safely packed away in prison for decades.” Nikki paused, her lips pressed into a thin line. “And it’s not the first one. Do you remember, a few weeks ago, that young woman who went missing from Manchester? Everyone was looking for her.”

  Heather’s stomach turned over. “Sharon Barlow. They found her by a river, didn’t they? I remember …” Except that the horrible thing was, she didn’t remember much. Once the frantic search was over, media attention had faded away and Sharon Barlow became one more woman lost to an unknown monster.

  “The police seem to think it was the same guy.”

  “There will be stuff they haven’t told the press, stuff that links the two cases together.” Heather thought of her days on the newspaper, sniffing after every tiny detail the police let slip. “Christ, I dread to think.’ She looked away from the laptop, trying not to picture what had happened to Sharon Barlow. “So, what? He has a tribute act?”

  “He’s always said he didn’t do it, you know,” said Nikki. “Even twenty odd years later, he still says he didn’t. What if they have the wrong man after all and maybe … your mum knew that?”

  Heather curled her hand around the hot mug of tea, trying to find some comfort in the familiarity of it. A new serial killer on the loose, or a miscarriage of justice. Did this man, who had known a side to her mum completely invisible to Heather, also know why she had killed herself? Either way, these were questions she desperately wanted answers to.

  “Hev,” Nikki said eventually. “Hev, you’ll have to take these letters to the police. There could be stuff in here that might be useful to them. Look, there’s a phone number here for anyone with information.’

  Heather nodded slowly. She thought of the man in the mugshot and wondered what he looked like, twenty-five years later.

  “Nikki,” she said, “do you think they’ll let me speak to him?”

  “What?”

  “This man knows more about my mother than anyone else on earth. Christ, they could have been phoning each other, Nikki! She could have been visiting him, and I wouldn’t have known. I’m sure if anyone knows why she killed herself, it’s him. Maybe that’s what she was getting at in her note. I want to talk to him.”

  Nikki placed her hands flat on the worktop and sighed. “I don’t know, I really don’t. I doubt they let just anyone rock up and talk to these people.”

  “Well, I’m not just anyone, am I?” Heather picked up the biscuit tin lid and turned it over and over in her hands. She still felt sick, but it was mixed with a tight feeling of excitement in her chest. There could be answers here. “I’m the only daughter of his only friend in all the world, it turns out. Nikki, I need to know. I have to find out what happened to my mum.”

  “Hev,” Nikki met her eyes steadily, and again there was the expression of sympathy Heather found so hard to look at. “Sometimes there are no answers. Sometimes awful shit just happens. All I mean is … don’t get your hopes up, okay?”

  * * *

  Heather walked home that night half in a trance. She had phoned the police from Nikki’s phone, and had eventually spoken to a man who introduced himself as DI Ben Parker. At first, he had sounded impatient, harassed even, but as she spat out the details of what her mother had hidden in her attic, his voice took on a quiet, musing tone. She had photographed a few of the letters and sent them to him, being sure to include those that had been received before Reave was in prison, and he had thanked her for her help. When she’d asked if she could come to the prison and meet Reave, he had shut the suggestion down immediately, if politely. Standing at the door to her mother’s house, wrestling with unfamiliar keys, Heather shivered and glanced uneasily at the tall trees looming on all sides.

  “As if this wasn’t all creepy enough already.”

  Halfway up the corridor to the living room she paused, a cold hand curling around her heart. Her mother’s perfume hung in the air, strong and unmistakable; violets and lily-of-the-valley, strange and sweet—the same scent from when she’d knocked the bottle over in her mother’s bedroom. Every Christmas, Dad had bought her a new bottle of it, and when he’d died, she bought it for herself. It was the only perfume she would ever wear, despite the old woman fustiness of it.

  Heather stepped into the living room, sniffing, and just as abruptly the scent was gone.

  Perhaps I’m having a stroke, Heather thought as she threw her satchel on the sofa, wincing at the clank as the biscuit tin crashed against something else in her bag. Sighing, she sat down next to it, sinking into the overstuffed cushions. “They say you smell odd things as your brain is turning off the lights.”

  Thanks to the chintzy pattern on her mother’s sofa it took her a few moments to spot the three brown feathers, lying against the soft fabric. Three feathers, small and faintly downy looking, their ends speckled with darker spots. Heather jumped up and looked around the room, although she couldn’t have said what she was looking for.

  “Is someone here?”

  She left the living room and quickly skirted around the house, poking her head into the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, the utility room—nothing. Upstairs was a similar story, each room sitting in its own little pool of silence, everything undisturbed. Was it possible she had just missed the feathers before? It seemed unlikely. Without her mum to tell her off, she had eaten most of her meals in the living room, a plate propped on her knees and some old film on the television. After a moment’s further thought, she went around and checked all the windows, but they were shut, too. It seemed unlikely that a bird could get in, shed a few feathers on the sofa, then find its secret way back out again. Eventually, she returned to the living room and stood looking down at them.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said aloud. The house kept its silence, only the faint hum of the fridge breaking it. But they were brown. Brown feathers, the rounded ends speckled with black. She couldn’t help feeling like she’d seen them before, years ago—that these were the exact same feathers…

  Heather shook her head sharply. The image of her mother, her head all caved in and wet sand on her shirt, gleefully leaving these feathers for her to find, was too sharp and clear. Her mother, still smelling of violets and lily-of-the-valley even though her brains were trickling down her neck, had held the brown feathers stiffly between her broken fingers.

  Heather made a small, gagging noise in her throat. Her mouth turned down at the corners, she went back into the kitchen to get a bit of kitchen towel. She used th
at to pick up the feathers, and then she threw them in the toilet and flushed them away. Once that was done, she washed her hands and turned all the lights on, before pouring herself a large glass of lemonade to settle her stomach.

  Calm down, Heather. It’s just your imagination and an afternoon spent googling serial killers. It’s ok. There’s no such thing as ghosts, she told herself.

  She had just started to convince herself that she had been overreacting when her phone rang, startling her badly enough to slop her drink down the front of her shirt. Going to the sink to put down her dripping glass, she pressed receive on the phone. It wasn’t a number she recognized.

  “Yeah?”

  “Miss Evans? It’s DI Parker again.” He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “Thank you for sending through the images so quickly.”

  “No problem.” Heather licked a drop of lemonade from her hand. “Are they of any help?” She and Nikki had spent some time trawling the Internet for more information, and a woman called Elizabeth Bunyon had been named as the latest victim of the so-called Red Wolf copycat. They had looked at the same photo of the woman, on so many news sites, until Heather felt she’d never forget her face.

  “Yes, and no. We have copies of some of them already, of course, as everything Reave sends and receives in prison is monitored.”

  “I saw that,” Heather broke in. “The stamps.”

  “But the earlier letters are interesting, at least. Miss Evans, I think the key to this isn’t in the letters, but more his reaction to them. He didn’t know your mother had passed away.”

  A cold shiver walked down the back of Heather’s neck. “You’ve told him? What did he say?”

  There was a beat of silence as DI Parker took a breath. “Very little, really. Michael Reave rarely says anything much, which has long been a source of frustration. But we need him to talk, and quickly. I’m sure you understand why.”

  In the kitchen, Heather frowned, wondering where this was leading.

  “I can imagine.”

  “He didn’t know about you either, that Colleen Evans had a daughter. When your name came up, his behavior changed. I …” DI Parker cleared his throat again. “I know we spoke about it briefly earlier, but would you really be willing to come in and speak to him? It’s not something we ask lightly, I promise you.”

  Heather blinked. This was exactly what she had wanted, when she had initially brought up the idea with Nikki, but now that it was being presented to her on a plate, she felt wrongfooted.

  “He’ll talk to me?”

  “He wants to talk to you.” Parker gave a small grunt of wry amusement. “You’re the only one he will talk to. And as I said Miss Evans, we desperately need to find out what he knows about these new … incidents. If he knows anything at all.”

  Heather looked up at the kitchen window, catching sight of her reflection. Her face was pale and her eyes were lost in dark shadows. She found herself thinking of her last day on the newspaper, and the feelings of strength and rage she’d had before it all went to shit. That Heather wouldn’t even hesitate.

  “Can I see the other letters? The ones my mum sent to him?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “… That may be possible.”

  Heather nodded to herself. It was a start.

  “When can I come in?”

  CHAPTER

  9

  THE FIRST THING that was wrong was the cat.

  Normally, when Fiona let herself in after a long day of persuading sulky teenage girls to throw a netball at each other, Byron would be immediately on ankle duty, curling himself enthusiastically around her trainers until opening cans of cat food was the only option. But as she let her shopping bag collapse onto the hall carpet—sloppily ejecting a rogue cabbage—the slinky devil was nowhere to be seen. The house was quiet. No ugly rattle of cat litter from the kitchen, and no guilty thump as he removed himself from the kitchen units.

  “Byron?”

  Muttering to herself, Fiona wrangled the shopping into the kitchen, flicking on lights as she went. Byron was a housecat, much too fancy, expensive, and, let’s face it, stupid to be allowed outside unsupervised, but he did occasionally find some new hiding place in the house, vanishing for hours. Once he had managed to squeeze himself into the open suitcase rammed underneath her bed. It was unlike him to pull a fast one at dinner time, however.

  Fiona began rattling around in the cupboards, making more noise than was necessary to remove a can of shredded chicken and empty it into a plastic bowl. Normally, these exact noises would bring Byron out of his hiding place at light speed, but the house remained quiet. She placed the plastic bowl on the floor and waited. Nothing.

  “Byron? You little sod.”

  At that point she thought of the wonky window she’d been meaning to fix for the last few weeks. He shouldn’t have been able to wriggle his way out of that, but what if he had? Pushing that thought from her mind, Fiona headed upstairs. May as well check everywhere before she started to panic.

  The second thing was the smell. It hit her on the staircase, a wild and unnerving funk, like cages at a zoo. She frowned on the landing, thinking that perhaps Byron was ill and had thrown up somewhere, although cat sick was never nearly so powerful.

  “Byron, you little sod, are you all right? That food is expensive you know, I’d appreciate you not puking it up every …”

  The words dropped into nothing, eaten up by silence and the stench.

  “Byron?”

  She stood by her bedroom door, a sick feeling building in her stomach at the sight of the evening’s deep shadows. The smell was worse in here. It was too easy to imagine terrible things waiting for her in the darkness—Byron dead on the bed, his little kitty brain overheated and his fur covered in vomit. Or something else, something worse. A figure in the dark perhaps, watching her.

  Abruptly annoyed with herself, Fiona flicked the light switch, watching with no small relief as the big ramshackle room was revealed; cupboard doors half hidden under hanging clothes, the huge bed that was far too big for her, covered in cushions; the nightstand with its pile of dog-eared romance novels. She crossed to the bed and sat down, yanking at the laces on her trainers.

  “You’ve found a mouse, I expect,” she said aloud to the room. “You killed it and made a mess, and now you’re too guilty to face me. That would explain the stink.”

  Free of her trainers, she leaned down to pick them up—just in time to see a hand sneak out from under the bed and curl around her ankle.

  The fright and the shock were like a hammer blow to her entire body. Fiona made an odd, whuffing sound—terror seemed to snap her lungs closed in an instant—and she tried to jump clear, but the hand around her ankle had a strong grip, and it yanked back viciously, causing her to lose her balance and crash to the floor. She hit the floor chin first, padded only slightly by the thick carpet, and as she opened her mouth to scream, she was aware of a great weight on the back of her legs. Whoever it was who had been hiding under the bed was climbing out, crawling up her rapidly. Fiona bucked wildly, attempting to throw them off, but they were bigger than her, stronger. She turned, catching a glimpse of a face hidden in a black woolen mask, and then there was another blow to her head, turning the edges of her vision dark and uncertain.

  “NO, no, no …”

  She brought her arms up and struck him again and again, horrified by the strange weakness in her shoulders. Fright had sucked all the strength from her, and he pushed her back onto the carpet, using his weight to pin her there. For an odd, elastic moment, Fiona remembered putting the benches away with her year seven’s: they did it in teams of three, but Fiona could lift one herself, because she was strong, so strong despite her height, everyone said so, everyone said … With another clench of horror and shame, she realized she’d wet herself.

  “Get OFF of me!”

  She landed a blow finally, pushing the man’s face back and away from her, but he lunged back and bit her, sinking his
teeth into the flesh of her hand just as though he was a rabid dog. The stink, that had never really gone away, increased to the point that it seemed to stop her breath in her throat.

  “Get off, help, HELP …”

  Fiona wriggled backwards frantically, her wrists and her lower back burning fiercely against the carpet weave. If she could just get free of him and down the stairs, there could be someone in the street. Her hand was bleeding and her heart was trying to thump its way out of her chest. He lunged again, and this time she saw that he had a white pad in his gloved hand, which he crushed into her face. A number of smells mingled together, sending spikes of pain into her eyes.

  “Listen,” he said, quietly, as though they were talking softly together in a library. He pressed his face close to her ear. “Listen. I’ve come to take you home.”

  Later, when both the humans were gone, Byron crept out of the trainer cupboard, belly close to the floor. The house still smelt strongly of the stench that had frightened him in the first place, so he slunk downstairs to the front door, which smelt only of blood.

  CHAPTER

  10

  “ARE YOU SURE you want to go through with this? You can still back out.”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” said Heather immediately. If she could get out of bed with this cloud of foreboding hanging over her, if she could get dressed and come here, all the way to this prison and to this anonymous little room without turning around, then she certainly wasn’t going to chicken out now.

  DI Ben Parker looked at her gravely, as though trying to spot her doubts. He was about an inch or so taller than her, on the stocky side, with sandy hair and hazel eyes—not her type at all, generally, but there was an untidiness to him that was faintly endearing; the knot in his tie slightly skewwhiff, a sense that he had tried to make his hair do something impressive, then given up because he had other things to think about. “Are there any tips you can give me? Any rules? Should I avoid making eye contact or anything like that?”