HAVING SLEPT FOR ONLY three hours, Ruth was drinking strong coffee, feeling lost and emotionally drained. However hard she tried, her thoughts were continually drawn back to what Ella might be going through. She would be frightened, but Ruth hoped it was no worse than that. Gates had demonstrated no indications of that terrible need to torture victims that some serial killers exhibited. But sitting alone, feeling powerless, she could only imagine the worst, with disturbing images flashing across her mind’s eye. Why did it do that? Why weren’t human beings able to control the dark thoughts that entered their heads? Given what she had witnessed in her own life, her career as a police officer, and in particular with Gates, the human brain didn’t seem fit for purpose.
The box of Gates’s possessions that she had taken from CID sat on the long dining table. Every document, photo album, ticket and receipt had been laid out in piles. It had taken nearly an hour to organise. Was there something here that would give her a clue to Ella’s whereabouts? Perhaps Gates’s folded birth certificate or Certified Copy of an Entry of Birth as it stated in red lettering at the top of the document. He had been born in Glan Clwyd Hospital on 14 December 1975, which made it Gates’s forty-third birthday tomorrow. She thought of the eight birth certificates of Gates’s victims, which would now be joined by death certificates in the coming months.
Putting aside her coffee and thumbing through a pile of Valentine’s cards from Kerry, Ruth realised that Gates had kept every one that Kerry had ever sent him. It didn’t make sense to her. Gates was a psychopath who enjoyed murdering men for sexual gratification. However, he seemed to have had a romantic, loving, even if platonic, relationship with his wife, Kerry. Keeping the Valentine’s cards seemed an odd quirk.
As she read through the cheesy messages of love, she noticed that the older cards had a repeated message in them: We’ll always have Tyddyn Llwyn xx. She assumed it was a meaningful reference to the end of the film Casablanca when Humphrey Bogart says goodbye to Ingrid Bergman with the line, ‘We’ll always have Paris.’
Trying to focus on looking for clues, Ruth flicked through photographs in old-fashioned Prontaprint packets. Her mind wandered again. Sian had returned home in the early hours and gone back to CID in Llancastell at the crack of dawn. She was glad that Sian was there to give her the inside track.
Suddenly, Ruth’s phone rang. Although it could have been Sian, Drake or anyone in CID, she intuitively knew it was Gates. She assumed he would have dumped Gwenda Chadwick’s phone after the last time he had called her. It would be easy to pick up a pay-as-you-go, or burner, phone from any supermarket. Triangulation from mobile masts could be effective if a suspect continued to use the same phone or if they knew the suspect’s number. They now had neither.
‘Ruth.’ It was Gates’s voice, irritatingly upbeat as though greeting a long-lost friend.
‘I want to speak to Ella.’ Ruth wasn’t going to entertain any of Gates’s nonsense until she knew that Ella was okay.
‘Of course,’ Gates said. There was a moment’s silence; Ruth’s heart started to beat faster.
‘Mum?’ It was Ella. She sounded scared but her voice was clear and strong, which suggested that she was still physically well.
‘Ella? Are you okay?’ Ruth’s hand shook as she held her phone. Tears ran down her face as she gritted her teeth.
‘Yeah, fine, don’t worry, I’m—’ Ella said, and then she was gone as the phone was taken away from her.
‘You lied to me, Ruth,’ Gates scolded.
‘That wasn’t down to me. I was there to pick you up and take you to the car as I promised. I had no idea about the guns and the arrest. It was an order that came from above my head.’ Knowing that Gates had some ideal of Ruth that was wrapped up in his own twisted fantasy, Ruth had to play along. ‘I’m sorry, Andrew. Really. That wasn’t what I wanted and I know that’s not what we agreed.’
‘It’s hard for me to trust you now, Ruth’
‘You can trust me. Honestly. But it’s going to be hard for me to help you now you’ve got Ella.’
‘You love Ella, don’t you?’ Gates question seemed genuine, as if he had only just had this thought.
‘Of course. She’s my daughter.’
‘She’s your only child, isn’t she?’
‘Yes. And if I’m going to help you and listen to what you need to tell me, then I need to come and get her,’ Ruth said.
There was silence at the end of the phone. She could hear Gates breathing but couldn’t second-guess what he was thinking.
‘Andrew? Tell me where you are and I will come and get both of you,’ Ruth suggested.
‘Both of us?’ Gates snapped suddenly. ‘I don’t want this to be about her. This is about me and what I want!’
Ruth was scared that Gates was becoming increasingly erratic and angry. ‘It is what you want. But you need to let me have Ella, so we can talk and you can have what you need.’
‘Stop talking about Ella! For God’s sake. Ella this, Ella that. Is she all you can think about? What about me? What about me, Ruth?’ Gates shouted down the phone in anger and twisted self-pity.
‘I’m sorry, Andrew. I just ...’
‘A child for a child? Is that fair?’ Gates bellowed.
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she didn’t like the sound of what he was saying.
‘What child, Andrew?’ As far as she knew, Gates didn’t have any children.
‘Our child. My child!’ Gates virtually spat the words down the phone.
‘Do you have a child, Andrew?’ Ruth couldn’t tell if Gates was revealing something of significance or just not making any sense.
‘Maybe it would be better if Ella wasn’t here,’ Gates said coldly.
‘Okay. I can come and get her. After that, it would be just me and you. That’s a good idea.’
‘No, no. I mean it might be better if Ella just wasn’t around at all.’
Even though Gates was being vague, Ruth trembled when she tried to analyse what he meant. ‘I don’t understand what you mean, Andrew.’
‘Of course you do, Ruth. Why must I simplify things for everyone? If Ella didn’t exist, then it really would just be me and you.’
‘Please, I don’t want you to hurt Ella. You don’t need to do that.’ Ruth could feel her voice trembling. The desperation and anxiety were overwhelming.
‘You need to come and meet me. On your own. And this time, I mean alone. I think you know what will happen if you break your promise again,’ Gates said. For once, his voice sounded grave.
‘It will be just me, I promise. Just please don’t hurt Ella, I’m begging you,’ Ruth pleaded. ‘Please.’ She would do anything to get her daughter back.
The line went dead. Gates had hung up. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably as Ruth tried to phone back. It was a struggle to hit the right buttons. Pull yourself together!
It rang out. She tried again. It rang out again.
When were they going to meet? Her sense of impending darkness was overpowering. She couldn’t bear to think of her daughter with Gates. She would risk her life for her daughter’s without a moment’s hesitation. And if that meant going to meet him with no back-up, no armed officers, nothing, then so be it.
She was no longer thinking and acting as a police officer. She was thinking and acting with all the basic, protective instincts of a mother.
THERE WAS AN UNNERVING silence as Nick slipped quietly into Amanda’s house. She had gone to work and would be out until early evening. Snapping on his purple forensic gloves, he felt a terrible pang of guilt and betrayal. He had prayed that morning that there would be nothing to show that Amanda and her friends were on Snowdon that afternoon. He promised his Higher Power that he would spend his life relentlessly helping others, both in his job and in sobriety, if Amanda wasn’t involved. He knew it didn’t work like that. He prayed for his mother twenty years ago. Promised that he would do anything if she was saved from cancer. It didn’t work twenty years ago, and he fea
red it wouldn’t work now.
Trying to put himself in Amanda’s shoes, and thinking about how she would have acted that day returning from Snowdon, he began to search the house. Striding to the kitchen, he looked again at the photo of Amanda and her three friends skiing. He peered closely at the face of her mixed-race friend. Her half-smile, dark eyes and black ringlets of hair that protruded from below a white woollen hat. Could that be the women who had sat in the café in Llanberis on the morning of Sunday 9 December? Yes, it could be. And if he needed, the boys in Technical Forensics could take certain features from both images and use one of the algorithms of facial-recognition technology to see if there was a match. But it hadn’t got to that point. Yet.
Moving closer to the photograph on the wall, Nick checked what Amanda was wearing: a Superdry ski jacket, gloves, beanie and sunglasses. Now that he thought about it, she hadn’t worn any of those things the day she had met him up on Snowdon. He spent the next twenty minutes checking her wardrobe, drawers and cupboards but found nothing that matched the clothes in the photo. There might be a perfectly good explanation. However, Amanda worked with the police and she wasn’t stupid. If anything had happened that afternoon, the smart thing would have been to get rid of all clothing. That would get rid of any significant risks of DNA or forensic evidence.
Sifting through jewellery cases and bags, Nick still couldn’t find anything of use. He was trying as hard as he could to leave no trace that he had been in the house at all. It was something that he had become skilled at.
Sitting on the living room floor, he opened a box of old photos he’d found in a cupboard under the stairs. Going through photos of Amanda as a child, with her parents, on holidays, made him squirm all the more. This was the woman that he was falling in love with. He picked up one photo, sat back and looked at it. She was an innocent five-year-old girl, sitting on an old-fashioned tractor, smiling without a care in the world. At that moment, the enormity of what was happening, and how it might play out, swept over Nick and a tear appeared in his eye. He took a deep breath.
What the bloody hell was he going to do if she was guilty of something? Hand her over to stand trial for manslaughter, conspiracy to murder or worse? Was he capable of doing that? And if this was all his mistaken paranoia, then he would have to live with the fact that he hadn’t trusted her.
Putting the box back where he’d found it, he looked around the hall. He was relieved that he hadn’t discovered anything. However, he did know that somehow he had to establish where she had been on 9 December.
Looking up the stairs, his eyes were drawn to a square hatch of wood in the ceiling of the first-floor landing. Access to the loft. His mood sank a little. If she had hidden anything away, it would be up there.
Reluctantly, Nick climbed the stairs, took a chair from the spare room and stood on it. He pushed the wooden hatch and moved it to one side. Clicking on his pocket torch, he peered through the dusty, dark air into the roof space. It was only about twelve-foot square and was lined with boxes and black bin bags. It would take hours to go through this lot.
As he reattached the wooden hatch, his thoughts turned to Ruth and how she must be feeling. Ella was a lovely young woman, and he knew how close they had become in the past two years. He would try to ring or even go see her later.
Suddenly, he heard a key in the front door. He froze. As far as he knew, Amanda was the only person who had another key. What was she doing home? Had she seen his car outside?
He manoeuvred the loft hatch back into position as quietly as he could. He stepped down from the chair onto the carpeted landing, picked it up and headed for the spare room.
‘Hello?’ Amanda’s voice called from downstairs. He hadn’t locked the front door behind him, so it was just on the latch. There was no way of hiding the fact that he was there.
‘Hi there!’ he called back breezily, still trying to concoct an excuse in his head.
‘You skiving?’ she called back.
He went to the stairs and began to descend. She came across, looked up at him and smiled.
‘I just popped in to get something I’d left here.’ Nick smiled back.
‘Not seeing if I was here for a quickie then?’ she asked with a cheeky grin.
This was killing him. ‘Actually, now you’re asking ...’ he replied, playing along.
Then her expression changed as she looked down. ‘You always walk around in forensic gloves?’ At first, it seemed like a joke, but something in her face gave away her realisation of why he might be wearing them.
‘No ... I must have forgotten ...’ He knew how weak and unconvincing he sounded as he took them off and continued down the stairs to the hall where she was standing.
Then there were seconds of unbearable silence. Was he going to continue to make feeble excuses and bluff his way out of this? Realising that he needed answers, whatever that brought, he let his face show how he was really feeling.
‘Really?’ she said in an angry, disbelieving tone.
He looked directly at her. ‘No ... That was a lie. I’m sorry. I really am.’
She closed her eyes for a moment as though she couldn’t quite believe this was happening. And then a tear came.
‘Do you know?’ she whispered.
‘I think so.’ He nodded and frowned. ‘You just need to tell me.’
‘I wanted to tell you, you know? So many times.’ She took a breath as she crumbled before his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see her like this. She put her hands over her face as the tears and sobbing overwhelmed her.
He held her as she shook. ‘Whatever it is, just tell me the truth. And then we can work out what to do. Okay?’
Through the shaking and tears, she nodded.
GATES RETURNED TO THE cabin with food and some other essentials. He felt a sense of achievement as he put the shopping bags down on the kitchen table. He went to the fridge, took out a bottle of white wine and swigged it. It was getting to be a habit, but he liked how it numbed some of the thoughts that whirled uncontrollably around his mind on an endless loop. The darkest of thoughts. It felt like a washing machine, he thought to himself. That endless tumbling of ideas, over and over again. And his thoughts were getting darker.
Going into the bathroom, he looked at himself in the mirror. He hadn’t shaved since being on the run, and now his stubble was starting to look like a short beard. If it continued to grow, it would help disguise him even more. He wore the glasses that he had stolen from the man he had murdered in the shop. Plus a baseball cap that he had stolen yesterday. Admiring how different he looked, he smiled and turned off the light. Always one step ahead of the coppers. They were so stupid.
He ducked his head into the living room where he had left Ella tied to the chair the night before. He had slept in way past dawn. When he woke, he had decided to postpone killing Ella for at least a day or two. He wanted to speak to Ruth again and use Ella as a bargaining tool. He couldn’t do that if she was dead.
Gates had allowed Ella to use the bathroom that morning at knifepoint. He didn’t want to share the cabin with someone who had soiled themselves or stank. Also, that would be inhumane and degrading. That’s not what this was about.
‘We’re relocating this morning, my little darling,’ Gates said as he waved over at Ella. She didn’t respond, which he thought was rude. He would let it go – this time.
Gates wanted to move on. A change of scene. He was also acutely aware that staying put in the same cabin would make their chances of capture much higher.
As he went around the cabin, his thoughts turned to Heidi, the daughter that he and Kerry had lost so early on in their marriage. And this was where it happened. Not this exact cabin, but this park. It had been God’s will, he supposed. For whatever reason. In those days, they still called it ‘cot death.’ Now, it was sudden infant death syndrome. The doctors couldn’t tell him and Kerry why Heidi had died. She had gone to sleep in their small holiday cottage and just never woken up. And it had crushed them bot
h. He believed that Kerry had never fully recovered.
It had only been during the night that Gates had realised Ella must be virtually the same age as Heidi would have been if she had lived. How wonderful it would have been to have watched a daughter grow up and be there every step of the way. Maybe if Heidi had lived, he wouldn’t have gone down the dark path that he was now treading.
For now, his priority was to see Ruth. He had her full attention and that made him happy. It might be best to wait another day, to let her fear really grow. Then his power over her would be absolute. She would do and say anything to get her Ella back. Stupid little Ella. A girl that had had all the love and attention of a mother throughout her life. No doubt she hadn’t appreciated it. They never do. Girls like Ella don’t appreciate anything until it’s gone and it’s too late. Spoilt. Why had God chosen Ella to live her life, full of love and opportunities, when he had taken Heidi so young? How was that fair? Ella hadn’t had an unhappy day in her life.
Gates could feel his anger growing. He glanced over at Ella from the kitchen and then looked over at the knife block, which contained six sharp kitchen knives. Maybe if she lost an ear or a finger, she might appreciate life a little more? Maybe she would appreciate her mother who had done everything for her? Maybe she needed to be taught a lesson?
The clouds drifted across the azure sky and behind the peak of Snowdon. It was morning and Llanberis was quiet. It was always quiet this time of year, thanks to the unpredictable weather and short daylight hours.
Amanda looked up. The sky and temperature boded well for their ascent of the mountain. The climb had been a last-minute thing, but her friend Kristin’s mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer a few months ago. They all wanted to do something. Kristin’s mum, Jackie, had been the mum that they had all gravitated towards as teenagers and then young adults. She was a free spirit, a child of the sixties, with a calm, non-judgemental wisdom that seemed so different from their own parochial parents. In fact, Amanda had wanted Jackie to be her mother.
The Dee Valley Killings Page 23