Dog Rose Dirt Read online

  ‘A few.’

  ‘A lot of people think you’re responsible for a number of missing women we don’t even know about yet. Do you want to tell me about that?’

  This time he didn’t even shrug, and the expression on his face was flat and very still.

  ‘Mr Reave … Michael, look, everyone believes you murdered those women. The whole country thinks of you as the Red Wolf.’ She thought she saw a flicker of some new emotion in his eyes at that. ‘Maybe you can think of me as a neutral party.’ She shrugged slightly. ‘Before I found those letters, I didn’t really know anything about you. Not anything beyond the tabloid headlines, anyway. Maybe you could take this as an opportunity to tell me how you saw things. Tell me your story.’

  He watched her now, a tiny crease appearing between his eyebrows. He shifted in his chair, and Heather saw that he was considering it.

  ‘My story?’

  Heather nodded.

  ‘My story.’ Reave leaned back in his chair and looked at the wall. The prison guards shifted; one of them crossed his arms over his chest. They both looked bored. ‘I was a poor country kid. My father did odd jobs for people, some of them less than legal, I reckon. My mother was an angry woman. She didn’t like me much, but then I don’t think she liked anyone much. She was cold and turned inwards on herself, wouldn’t speak for days sometimes. I remember her stoking the stove up until it was fair spitting sparks, and she would sit by it for hours, until one side of her was all red and mottled, just staring at nothing. When she was angry with me, she would shut me away.’ He cleared his throat and met Heather’s eyes again. ‘When a doe rabbit has kits, Heather, she has to feel completely safe. If she doesn’t feel safe, lass, if she feels that there is a predator in the woods, do you know what she’ll do?’

  Heather shook her head.

  ‘She’ll eat her young to save herself. A kit is all scent and hot blood, Heather – it doesn’t know that it’s like a beacon for hungry things. It’ll lead the predator to the mother rabbit, and she can’t have that. She’ll eat her own babies to save herself.’

  The prison guard had uncrossed his arms, and was now staring at Reave with a look of open dislike.

  ‘I—’

  ‘It sounds monstrous, but some things are just not born with maternal instincts. Some things are born scared, rabbits being one of them.’

  ‘Was there a predator in your house growing up, Michael?’

  He smiled then, a really genuine smile, and she found herself recoiling in confusion, because he looked vulnerable. He looked lost.

  ‘No one cares about my story, lass. No one cares about poor kids growing up in dirty houses that are never warm, or about what they have to do to live. What they have to do to get out. Not even you, girl.’

  I do care. The words were on her lips for the briefest second, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say them. Those words might be the key to getting the rest of his story, yet she found she could only think of the photos of the girls that were for ever linked to his name. I do care, she thought. I care about them and my mother. I care about Sharon Barlow and Elizabeth Bunyon.

  ‘Was Fiddler’s Mill your way out, Mr Reave? Is that where you escaped to?’

  He said nothing to that.

  Not taking her eyes off him, Heather reached into her bag for the folder and pulled out the prints she’d had made. Each of whytewitch’s pictures and photographs had been blown up to A4 size, a little larger than the file could take, it turned out, but something about the graininess of the images made them more impressive. The first photograph she slid across the table towards him. It showed bleak fields, a cluster of tents off to the right, and Fiddler’s Mill House in the distance.

  Reave looked down at the picture without moving or speaking. Heather couldn’t be sure, but she felt like he was holding something back again, as he had when he had first laid eyes on her.

  ‘Do these bring back any memories?’

  He tipped his head to one side; a noncommittal answer.

  ‘I guess if you spend your formative years there, it’s difficult to forget.’ She placed the second picture on top of the first: another photograph, this one of more tents, slightly blurry people coming and going, smoke coming from several places. ‘I found these online, taken by a woman who calls herself whytewitch, would you believe. She was there at Fiddler’s Mill in the Seventies too. Do you remember her at all?’

  He looked away, a flexing in his jaw that told her he was not happy. Not happy. Heather thought of her mother’s body lying broken at the bottom of a cliff, of the faces of the women who came up on a Google image search under his name. With a flourish, she produced more pictures, dumping them one on top of the other. Reave looked at them impassively, as though they were a work colleague’s boring holiday snaps.

  ‘She took a lot of photos back then, and she was an artist, too. She found it a very inspirational place, I guess. What did it mean to you, Michael? What did it mean to my mum?’

  ‘Lass, I understand your pain over your mum, I really do,’ said Reave, his voice slow, a soft parody of compassion. ‘You want to understand what she did. But perhaps there’s no understanding something like that. No understanding the fear that makes you eat your own babies, or the fear that makes you kill yourself.’

  Heather said nothing.

  Images of whytewitch’s paintings were next, and the one of the figure in the red coat emerging from the woods went skittering across the slippery pile, almost landing in his lap. Michael Reave looked down at it, and abruptly he was yanking on the chain around his wrists, pulling hard enough that Heather felt the bolted table jump under her hands. She yelped and scrambled back even as Reave was standing, still repeatedly yanking on the chain, apparently trying to pull the whole thing up by the roots.

  ‘That’s enough.’

  DC Turner’s hand was on her shoulder, gripping it none too gently, and before she really knew what was happening, she was being propelled out of the room. Just before the door slammed shut, she saw the two guards moving in towards Reave, and she caught the expression on his face; he was furious, points of colour high on his cheeks. And then the view was cut off.

  ‘What …?’

  Abruptly, Heather realized her legs weren’t holding her up properly, and she fell against the wall. DC Turner was glaring at her and rubbing the back of his neck.

  ‘I think that’s going to be your lot, Miss Evans.’

  ‘I … what happened?’ It was difficult to breathe – she felt roughly the same as the time a car had turned a corner unexpectedly on Peckham High Street and nearly run her over. His sudden eruption from calm boredom to violent rage had made her dizzy.

  ‘You pissed him off.’ Turner shrugged. ‘You can’t predict people like that, love, so don’t feel bad about it.’

  ‘But we were getting somewhere!’

  ‘It costs money, stuff like this. Did you know that? I didn’t expect you would.’ He curled his lip, then made an effort to arrange his features into a sympathetic expression. ‘Me watching over you, those guards in there. We’ve all got better things we could be doing – me especially, given we’ve got another nutter like him on the loose.’

  ‘Hey, you people asked me to do this.’ Heather pushed herself away from the wall. ‘Where is DI Parker? I want to talk to him about it.’

  Turner laughed and gestured down the corridor. ‘Now, DI Parker definitely has better things to be doing than talking to you, I’m afraid. It’s time to go.’

  ‘Can I at least get those printouts back?’

  Turner sighed dramatically again, and Heather wondered how well he’d be sighing if she slammed her elbow into his nose. The incident at the newspaper loomed large in her thoughts – the sound of gagging, blood dripping onto a biscuit-coloured carpet – and she clenched her fists instead.

  ‘If he hasn’t torn them up, you’re welcome to them.’

  An hour or so later, as Heather sat in a bar in Lewisham nursing a shot of whisky to calm her
nerves, DI Parker called. She cleared her throat and answered, willing herself to sound cool and professional.

  ‘I was sorry not to see you today, DI Parker. Belmarsh is a lot more appealing with you in it. Plus your mate Turner is a waste of skin.’

  ‘How did it go? With Reave?’

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  There was a beat of silence before Parker replied.

  ‘You’ve got to expect him to be temperamental. Difficult to understand. But even how he reacts to things can be useful to us.’

  ‘He knows more about my mother’s death than he’s telling, I’m sure of it.’ Heather picked up the glass of whisky, picturing her mother’s face briefly, creased and stern, as it often was. ‘I’d like to keep going, if that’s possible.’

  Parker made a noncommittal noise. ‘Our priority has to be your safety.’

  ‘Aw, I’m touched. But he’s chained to the table, and you’ve got your giant blokes there. What could he do?’

  ‘Not all damage is physical, Miss Evans.’

  Heather took a sip of whisky, grimacing against the burn in her throat. She thought of the mortuary, and her mother’s broken body. She hadn’t seen it, of course – ultimately the body had to be identified with her dental records and the engraved wedding ring still on her finger – but it was funny how little phrases stayed with you, particularly when you had a vivid imagination. Her mother’s bones, shattered into lethal shards; her mother’s hair, heavy with sand and pieces of rock. Physical damage. Organic material. The bar, just starting to get busy, dipped and weaved around her as if she was on the deck of a boat, and she forced herself to focus on Ben Parker’s voice. He was speaking again.

  ‘… no way to know it’s related, but it smells like it to me. It’ll be in the papers by now.’

  ‘I’m sorry, what?’

  ‘A woman called Fiona Graham appears to have been taken by force from her house. There are reasons to believe this is our copycat again.’

  ‘Fiona Graham?’ Heather blinked. It was like being dunked in cold water. ‘I feel like I know that name.’

  ‘You do? Where from?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She willed herself to remember, but despite a strong sense that she’d heard the name before, no other details came to mind. ‘I’ll have to think about it,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘If you do remember, let me know.’

  ‘Sure. Listen …’ She bit her lip. The familiarity of Fiona Graham’s name had brought back some of her excitement despite her unpleasant afternoon at the prison. There were clues here, pieces to a larger puzzle, and she just had to get them all lined up to get her answers. Maybe, in fact, she was the best person to do it. ‘Are you up for a drink at all? A chat? Today has shaken me a bit, and I could do with looking at a friendly face.’

  ‘Heather, we’ve got our hands full here, and I’m not even in London …’

  In the bar, Heather closed her eyes, wincing.

  ‘… but maybe when I’m back?’

  She put the glass down. ‘Absolutely. Give me a shout.’

  From there the conversation became awkward, and she sensed him mentally retreating from her. Standing in the bar, her cheeks were warm with embarrassment, but she couldn’t feel entirely bad about asking him out so blatantly – later she would go back to an empty house, with nothing to think about but murdered women and the mystery of her own mother’s death. Was it so terrible to want company? The whisky was sour in her throat, and after she said her goodbyes, she downed the rest without pleasure.

  14

  Before

  Michael lived at the big house, but Fiddler’s Wood was his home.

  He spent most of his days out there, whatever the weather, tramping through the undergrowth, sitting with his back against a tree or following half-hidden paths to places that seemed significant: a dead tree, blasted black and white by lightning decades ago; a deep ditch riddled with dog roses; a trio of birches, growing up together, twisted and light-dappled. Under the rain and wind and ever-weakening sun, he grew taller and stronger. The marks on his wrists and neck faded, and the hair at his temple grew back, although it was the colour of moonlight now.

  There were still nightmares most nights. He dreamt of the cupboard, or he dreamt of his mother’s thick fingers twisted in his hair, her face contorted with rage, or slack and absent. Sometimes, he dreamt of a flat, red landscape, the sky the colour of dusty roses, and there were things on the land, desperate, howling things, and from these dreams he still woke screaming, but the knowledge of the wood outside his window – dark and cool and green – was a balm to him.

  Michael did not go to school, although he could not really remember ever going to school. He had some very vague memories of being left at a place with lots of children who did not want to speak to him, and he had an impression he had not been there for long. Instead, the man let him look at the books in the one room in the house that was full of them, and to Michael’s surprise he found that the words did make some sort of sense. The man largely left him to his own devices, providing food when Michael reappeared from the woods, covered in mud, or sometimes walking out with him across the fields, the big black dog somewhere in the grass ahead.

  One day in the spring, the man caught him at the door just as he was hopping into a pair of boots.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you today, lad,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  He whistled between his teeth and the dog skittered across the wooden floor, and then they were out under a sky the colour of cornflowers. Instead of heading to the woods, the man took them towards an old shed. Michael had always ignored it. A shed wasn’t the woods, after all.

  ‘Here. Come look over here. Stand on that bucket.’

  It was a large shed that clearly didn’t see a lot of use. There were tools and boxes stored in it, enormous rusty spades and sacks that had turned discoloured at the bottom. The rafters holding the roof up were blistered and old, and there was a sizeable hole there, a chunk of sky staring through. Michael climbed up onto the overturned steel bucket and looked at the corner just below the hole. There was a bird’s nest, complete with three little chicks. Belatedly, Michael realized he had been hearing their peeping cries since they had entered the shed.

  ‘Now look down there.’ The man pointed. On the floor, in the dust and some curls of sawdust, was the body of a plump female blackbird. Its neck was at a strange angle and its eye, like a tiny bubble of ink, stared up at nothing.

  ‘A cat must have got at it,’ said the man. Michael knew instinctively that this was a lie. He had never seen a cat here, not in the fields or anywhere near the house, or even in the woods, and besides, he felt certain that the dog wouldn’t have tolerated it. As if it had been summoned, the dog trotted over to them and stuck its nose into the body of the bird, panting loudly in the small space. ‘These chicks will die in a day or so. What will you do about it?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘They’re yours now. Here.’ The man reached up and scooped the chicks into his big shovel hands, and then pressed them on Michael. Shocked and somewhat repulsed, Michael gathered them into his jumper. Their outraged peeping grew louder, and they struggled weakly in his arms, oversized heads weaving back and forth.

  ‘I don’t know what to bloody do with them.’

  ‘Do whatever you like,’ said the man. Michael looked at him. ‘That’s the point. Touch them, feel that they are living things, then do what you like.’

  The man and the dog left him and, unsure what else to do, Michael took the chicks to the woods. As he walked, he contemplated a few different outcomes, the sorts of ideas that occur to children of that age – perhaps he would find a blackbird family in the woods willing to take on a few extra babies, or he could dig up worms, and feed the chicks himself, by hand. Eventually they would be his own pets, and they would come when he called them. The idea pleased him.

  Eventually he came to one of his favourite spots: a grassy bank next to a small, muddy stream. The t
ree cover broke a little here, allowing for a small sunny patch, turning the stumpy grass a brilliant, almost supernatural green, while the space beneath the bank provided a hidden spot of cool thick mud and the occasional toad. Michael put his chicks down on the grass and watched them as they wriggled about. The peeping had mostly stopped, as if they sensed that they were no longer in the safety of their home – as if they knew that there were predators around.

  Gently, he pressed the end of his finger to the chest of one. He could feel its tiny heartbeat, impossibly fast and frantic, and the slightly clammy warmth of its skin. He imagined the blood surging around its body, getting ready to push out feathers, even as the bird knew nothing of where it was or what it was. It was just a life, waiting to happen.

  Michael picked up the baby bird and, carrying it in one hand, climbed down the little hillock to the shadowy bank of the stream. The mud here was soft and only a little stony, and it took only a few moments to scoop out an empty pocket. A tiny grave.

  He placed the bird in it, and paused, watching it wriggle. For some reason, his heart was beating very fast – as fast as the bird’s, almost. He pressed his fingers to the bird, pushing it into the mud, and felt very aware of his own strength – how easy it would be to push until tiny bones snapped, until newly formed innards became a paste. The brutal red landscape was very close. If he closed his eyes tight, he was sure he would see it.

  Frowning slightly, he picked up a handful of the discarded mud and squashed it down on top of the chick. The peeping stopped. He gathered more mud, packing it in tightly, and then he sat with his hand pressed to the wet earth, counting seconds in his head. When two full minutes had passed, he dug back into the mud. At first, he couldn’t find it, as though the earth had just absorbed the baby bird back into its heart – the idea excited him – and then his probing fingers met a squishy resistance. He pulled it out and was shocked to see that it was still alive; the thing had black mud in its throat and one of its little legs was bent the wrong way, but its head still weaved back and forth pitifully. Michael held it up, both annoyed and full of wonder.