“We need to know how these two girls are linked,” Battle said. “Because something brought them both into contact with the same killer, five years apart. From the details on the files that were compiled at the time, there doesn’t seem to be any connection. They went to different schools. Castleton and Tideswell are only eight miles apart, but each is a separate community, and we have no evidence of these girls being involved in shared activities or visiting the same locations. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, of course, so we need to revisit that line of enquiry. Where did they become noticed by our killer?”
“Perhaps it was random, sir,” a uniformed officer on the front row said. “He just happened to be in the woods where Joanna Kirk was walking her dog and grabbed her.”
Battle nodded. “It’s possible. But it’s going to make our investigation a lot harder if he was working opportunistically. I want to examine every angle on this, and the chance of some sort of connection between the girls, however tenuous, could lead us to our killer.”
“What about Mary Harwood?” Tony asked, raising his voice so he could be heard at the front of the room. “A connection might be easier to find if we look at all three girls.”
“Mary Harwood?” Battle asked.
“She went missing twenty-two years ago at Miller’s Dale. She—“
“Yes, I know who she is. I’m just not sure why you’re connecting her to this case.”
“Colleen Francis, Mary’s younger sister, contacted us yesterday. She thought the body at the well could be Mary’s.”
Battle nodded. “Yes, I know. I was the one who sent you to interview her. But now we know the body isn’t Mary’s; it’s Joanna Kirk’s.”
“Still, the person who took Mary could be the same—“
“We don’t have any evidence linking Mary Harwood to this case.”
“Not concrete evidence, no, but there’s a good chance that the person who abducted Joanna is the same man who took Mary two years earlier.”
“A good chance?” Battle asked.
“Well, unless Derbyshire was riddled with serial killers who abducted similar looking girls in the same time period, yes. A very good chance.”
“Until some evidence comes to light that links Mary Harwood to this case, we can’t assume she was taken by the same man. Our resources are stretched as it is. We can’t investigate a third girl on a whim.”
“It isn’t a whim,” Tony whispered to himself, frustratedly.
“What was that?” Battle asked.
“I was just going to say that there’s was a witness to Mary’s abduction, which is more than we’ve got where Joanna and Daisy are concerned.”
“That witness is Mary’s younger sister,” Battle said. “She was quite young at the time of Mary’s disappearance, and the police didn’t think she was credible. Even her own mother doubted the veracity of her statement.”
“Mrs Harwood doesn’t want to believe her daughter was abducted. She’d rather tell herself Mary drowned, even if she knows deep down that it isn’t true.”
Battle sighed frustratedly. “We’ll investigate Mary Harwood’s disappearance if evidence comes to light that points us in that direction.”
“You mean if her body turns up in a public place.”
“There could be any number of things that lead us to have another look at Mary’s case, but they have to be tangible and evidential. A lot of girls have gone missing from this area over the years; we can’t investigate all of them just because they might be connected to Daisy and Joanna.”
“But how will we get any evidence if we don’t at least look—“
“We’re here to find Daisy’s killer,” Battle said, pointing at the faces on the screen. “And Joanna’s. We have their remains, which were disinterred by the same person. That means there’s more than a ‘good chance’ that they were killed by the same person; it’s almost a certainty. This is where we focus our attention; on what’s in front of us.”
There was a lot more Tony wanted to say, but he could see there was no point. Battle was obviously so eager to close the Daisy Riddle case—a case he’d failed to close years before—that he was blinkered to the possibility that finding the killer might mean looking elsewhere. Somewhere where there was a witness and more clues.
The best way to catch a serial killer was to investigate their first kill. That was the crime where they might have made a rookie mistake. The victim was usually someone known to them. Mary Harwood had been abducted before Joanna or Daisy; she might very well be this killer’s first victim.
But Tony said none of this. As the DCI moved on and began to give various units their tasks for the day, Tony looked down at his phone and brought up the pictures of the Polaroids in Mary’s room. The woman sitting by the river, and in the field, dressed in a floral summer dress, intrigued him. Who was she, and why did Mary have these photos of her?
June hadn’t recognised the woman, but Colleen might know who she was. He had to ask her. He’d have to do it on his own time, of course, because Battle had closed off that avenue, as far as official lines of enquiry went.
As he put the phone back into his pocket, he told himself that he was going to unofficially investigate Mary Harwood’s disappearance. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do with his free time while he was in Derbyshire. Might as well make himself useful.
When the briefing was over and everyone began filing out through the door, Dani pushed her way through the crowd towards him.
“What was that all about?” she asked when she reached him.
At first, he didn’t know what she was referring to, then he realised she was talking about his brief quarrel with Battle. “Oh, nothing. Unfortunately, the DCI is so focused on solving a case he failed to solve fifteen years ago that he’s not thinking straight.”
“That’s your professional opinion, is it?”
“Yes, certainly.”
“You have to admit that there’s nothing to connect Mary with the two bodies we’ve just found.”
“There is one thing,” he said, as they moved towards the door with the others.
“What’s that?”
“Common sense.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What? You don’t think I’m right? There’s every chance that the man in the black Land Rover, the one Mary drove away with, is the same man who killed Daisy and Joanna.”
“And what about all the other girls who went missing from this area in the past twenty years? Are they all connected?”
“Well, no, I’m not saying that.”
“Good, because I did some reading last night and it seems there was a spate of abductions in the Dark Peak area spanning even longer than two decades. After the case was solved, the papers called the victims the Wildflower Girls. Battle was in charge of that case, and the perpetrator was caught, so the DCI is acutely aware that not every missing persons case is related. He’s being cautious.”
Tony nodded. “And that’s fine, as long as his caution doesn’t make us overlook something vital.”
“I’m sure it won’t.”
They were out of the door now, walking along the corridor to the exit.
“Look,” Tony said, “Colleen’s house is just down the road. What do you say to us taking a stroll down there and seeing if she knows who the woman on the Polaroids is?”
“I say that’s going against the guvnor’s orders.”
Sighing, Tony said, “Fine. I’ll do it on my own time.”
They exited the Rutland Hotel and stood on the pavement. “So, you’re going to chase this down on your own?” Dani asked.
“What choice do I have? Battle won’t see sense, but I know there’s something important here.” He took out his phone and showed her the picture of the woman sitting on the riverbank. “Who is she, Dani?”
“I don’t know.”
“But don’t you want to? Aren’t you curious?”
“Of course I am.”
He gestured down the road
, towards the outskirts of Bakewell. “Colleen’s house is less than five minutes’ walk that way. If anyone knows who this woman is, it’ll be her.”
The DI put her hands on the hips and stared in the direction Tony had indicated.
“What would we be doing otherwise?” Tony asked, sensing her resolve wavering. “Getting a bird’s eye view? Reading case files that have no clues or witnesses in them? At least if we find out who this is, that’s something concrete we can work with.”
She came to a decision and nodded. “All right, we ask Colleen if she recognises the woman, and if she does, we’ll make some brief enquiries. If she doesn’t that’s the end of it. Okay?”
“Of course.”
They set off down the road, walking past a long line of cars bringing tourists into the small town. On the other side of the busy road, there was a park where parents—wrapped up against the cold weather in thick coats—watched their children as they swung on the swings and clambered over a climbing frame.
Beyond the park, Tony could see a river with ducks and swans being fed by yet more tightly swaddled adults and children.
“It’s lovely here,” Dani said.
“Yes, very picturesque.” Tony put his hands in his pockets. He’d left his gloves in the car, and the air was definitely nippy.
“Something important happened today,” he told Dani. “Regarding the case, I mean.”
She looked at him quizzically. “Oh? What’s that?”
“No one has found a body. He didn’t leave one for us.”
She thought about that for a moment as they strolled along the pavement, then said, “Maybe he hasn’t got any more. Joanna and Daisy could be his only victims.”
“No chance,” Tony scoffed. “This has been going on for decades. There are plenty more where they came from.”
“Well, maybe he’s having a day off. The police presence might have scared him. Too risky to be carting his victim’s bodies around when there are police everywhere.”
“No, he’s not scared. Careful, perhaps, but not scared. And besides, they’re not his victims. I told you, it’s not the killer doing this. It’s someone else.”
“So you keep saying.” Her tone let him know she didn’t believe him.
“I keep saying it because it’s the only logical explanation for what’s happening.”
“Someone else digging up the killer’s victims doesn’t make much sense to me. If someone found the buried girls, they’d tell the police, not dig them up themselves and leave them in a ruined temple and by an old well.”
“We can’t base our suppositions on what you or I would do in such a situation. I told you, this person has a complex relationship with the killer.”
“An accomplice.”
“No, I don’t believe they were involved with the actual killings at all.”
“Then it makes even less sense.”
The pavement on this side of the road ended, and they continued on the grass verge. Tony glanced across the road while he gathered his thoughts. The park was behind them now, and the opposite side of the road was lined with detached houses set back from the pavement. In front of one of them, Tony saw a man in dark blue overalls working on a Marlin kit car that was parked on the gravelled area in front of his garage.
“The person who’s doing this is someone closely related to the killer,” he told Dani as he looked back at her. “For example, imagine a woman discovers that her husband has been killing girls for years, and burying them in the back garden. What does she do?”
“She calls the police.”
“Yes, if she’s thinking rationally. But what if she’s not thinking rationally? What if she has mental issues of her own? What if her relationship with her husband is more complex than that? What if there’s another factor involved?”
“I’m not sure I follow you. What other factor?”
“In the scenario I just described, a woman finding her husband’s victims wouldn’t be able to just disinter them and leave them in public places.”
“No, she wouldn’t,” Dani agreed. “As soon as it hit the News, her husband would know what she’d done.”
“Exactly.”
She looked at him and frowned. “Still not following.”
“Now, imagine the same scenario, but this time, the husband is dead.”
“In that case, she could dig up the bodies without the fear of him finding out.”
“Yes, she could. And now, the question of whether or not to call the police isn’t so simple. She’d be besmirching her dead husband’s name. The police might think she was involved somehow. And not calling the police doesn’t have the same consequences it would have if the husband was alive; he can’t kill again due to her not reporting him.”
Dani frowned. “Is this like one of those moral problems where a train is heading towards a group of people, and you can divert it, but if you do, it kills a man on the other line?”
“I’m just trying to point out that it isn’t all black and white.”
“So, the wife could just leave the bodies where they are, and not tell anyone. That solves the problems of her dead husband’s reputation, and the police thinking she’s involved.”
“Yes, it does,” Tony said, nodding. “But it doesn’t solve the problem of how she reconciles the discovery of the bodies with her memories of her dead husband.”
“Her memories would be tainted, obviously.”
“If they were good memories. But what if she hated her husband even before she discovered the bodies? What if he was abusive? Controlling? His death might have been the best thing that ever happened to her.”
“So, she puts the murders down to yet another bad thing he did when he was alive and tries to come to terms with the fact that she knows where the missing girls are but can’t tell anybody. It isn’t what I’d do, but I can see why someone else might do that. But if she hated him so much, revealing who he really was by calling the police could give her some kind of satisfaction. A type of revenge.”
“Except that the police might question her involvement. Are they going to believe that he was doing this for years and she never knew about it? That she never knew about all those dead bodies in her garden? In her mind, getting the police involved could be a huge risk. She’d be gambling a lot for that revenge.”
“So, she covers the bodies over, and never tells anyone,” Dani said. “Or she could leave a letter to be sent to the police after her own death, explaining everything. That way, she wouldn’t put herself at risk.”
“But she also wouldn’t get that sweet revenge while she’s alive.”
Dani shrugged. “I suppose not.”
“So, she digs up the bodies and gives them to the police while keeping her own identity secret,” Tony said. “She gets revenge on the dead husband by revealing his crimes, something he wanted to keep hidden all his life. She also keeps herself out of the spotlight by doing the grisly work at night. By the time the bodies are discovered, she’s far away.”
Dani thought about it for a while, and then said, “You think the killer is dead, and it’s his wife who’s leaving the bodies for us?”
“It doesn’t have to be his wife. It could be someone else who was close to the killer or had a reason to want to bring these crimes to light. But I do think the killer is dead, yes. Otherwise, the person revealing the bodies would be putting themselves into too much danger. The killer would find out and would do something about it.”
“I don’t know,” The DI said. “You’re making a lot of suppositions.”
“They’re suppositions based on facts. I’ve tried to work out the psychological state of the person leaving the bodies based on his—or her— actions. This person is probably suffering from a psychotic breakdown. That might have been triggered by the death of the killer—someone they probably have unresolved issues with—or something else. Digging up and transporting corpses is not normal behaviour.”
“That’s something we both agree on,” Dani said.
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They reached a street named Burton Close Drive, which led to the right. Tony pointed along it. “This is the way. This road leads to Wyedale Crescent.”
They left the main road behind and walked along the quiet street. “If we don’t find this person soon,” Tony said, “their psychosis will deepen, and they may become a threat to others. They won’t be able to separate fantasy from reality. They may hear voices, experience hallucinations. That, combined with the fact that the killer of these girls is probably consuming their thoughts, will most likely cause a descent into violence.”
“So, the next body we find could have been killed by them, and not the original killer?”
Tony shrugged. He’d been formulating his theories regarding this unknown person for a while, but he didn’t know anything for sure. People were too unpredictable. “It’s a possibility. Everyone close to this person is in danger.”
They turned left down Wydale Crescent and found Collen’s house. Tony knocked on the door.
Colleen answered. When she saw Tony and Dani, her face fell. “Oh my God, you’ve found her, haven’t you?”
“No, we haven’t,” Tony said. “May we come inside for a moment?”
She stepped aside and let them in. Lucas was in the living room, playing with Lego on the floor while a blue creature on the TV was singing about his name being “Iggle Piggle.”
“Take a seat,” Colleen said, following them into the room. “Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” Tony said, taking a seat on the sofa. Dani also declined and sat next to him.
Colleen perched on the edge of the armchair. She looked tired. “I’ve been checking the News on my phone every five minutes. I thought they’d find another girl today. This time, it might be Mary.”
“No new bodies have been discovered today,” Tony said. “I would like to ask you something, though, and it does involve your sister.” He took out his phone and found the picture of the woman sitting by the river. Passing the phone to Colleen, he asked, “Do you know who this is?”
She looked at the screen and frowned. “No. Should I? Who is she?”
Silence of the Bones: A Murder Force Crime Thriller Page 13