Even though they hadn’t registered for a particular cancer charity, nor were they being sponsored, Amanda insisted that they all wear something pink in support of Jackie, Kristin and the battle that all women must fight against cancer.
Starting the day with breakfast at Lillie’s Little Café, Amanda, Kristin, Nyree and Olivia laughed and chatted as only old friends can. They had gone to school and sixth-form college together. They had shared their first experiences of drinking and throwing up, of boys, lost virginities and break-ups, drugs, exams and holidays. They went to university or college and got jobs, but always kept in touch. Kristin had got married and moved to Canada; the hen night had been a legendary party in Newquay with a stag do from Essex.
And, of course, they had all rallied around Amanda when she had been raped six months earlier.
Setting off at nine-thirty from the Pyg Track car park, Amanda watched as the sun broke through the clouds and the surrounding snowy terrain was brought into sudden and sharp focus. She had been through so much in recent months. To be in this heavenly landscape with the three people that mattered most to her filled her with such joy. As they chatted loudly against the noise of the wind, a valley became visible to the left, ringed by the snow-capped mountains. The lake below was dark blue, deep and cold. In the distance was the strip of green pines that formed a rigid boreal layer. And up above them, as they climbed, rose the grey of millions of tonnes of volcanic rocks and sediment, only softened by the untouched snow.
As they walked towards the point where the Pyg and Miners’ tracks met, two men strode past them from behind.
‘Morning, ladies,’ the older, well-built man said with a cheesy grin.
‘Hi there.’ The younger man had given them a little wave.
Amanda and her friends slowed a little to let them gain some distance. They didn’t want to discuss their lives in earshot of two strange men. Amanda already had the older man down as a pompous twat.
However, it seemed the two men had other ideas as they stopped and turned back down the mountain.
What the hell do they want? Amanda thought. She had become noticeably more wary of men since she had been attacked.
‘So sorry to interrupt ... I’m not sure if you ladies are interested, but I’m having a party over in Llancastell tonight. We thought you might like to join us for a few drinks after a hard day’s walking?’ the older man said, removing his sunglasses and wiping sweat from his brow.
‘No, thanks,’ Amanda said in an unfriendly tone. He had that ‘rugger bugger’ air of entitlement that she hated so much.
‘Come on. It’ll be fun. We don’t bite,’ the younger man said as he laughed.
Olivia gave a forced smile. ‘We’re old friends. And we just want to catch up. But thanks for the offer.’
The older man came closer, a little too close. It made Amanda feel instantly uneasy. ‘Come on, girls, live a little, eh?’
‘Sorry. We’re spending the evening together. Just the four of us,’ Nyree said in a spiky tone.
And then Amanda saw it. Something in the man’s eyes, the expression around the eyes and the mouth. It came back her like a punch to the stomach.
She was standing two feet away from the man who had raped her.
‘I’m sorry, have we met? I’m sure I recognise you from somewhere?’ the man continued to grin as he looked at Amanda, who was frozen to the spot, her heart pounding hard. She couldn’t breathe. She was having a panic attack.
Kristin frowned. ‘What is it, Mand? You okay?’
‘I’m ... no ... I’m ...’ Amanda said as she gasped for breath.
‘I’ve got a good memory for faces. It’s ...’ the man said, trying to remember her name.
‘He’s ... the man that raped me,’ Amanda said wide-eyed. She couldn’t believe this was happening.
Her statement was loud enough for the two men to hear. The younger man looked at his brother in bewilderment.
‘What?’ said Nyree.
‘Are you sure?’ Olivia asked.
‘Yes. It’s definitely him,’ Amanda said, her voice trembling.
‘Oh my God! Are you fucking joking?’ Kristin asked, turning to look at him.
The man backed away. ‘Hang on a second, I think you’ve got your wires crossed here ...’
Reaching down and grabbing a fist-sized rock with her shaky hand, Amanda knew it was him. You didn’t forget something like that. Retreating, the man looked at Amanda as if he didn’t believe she was going to attack him. Then she swung her arm and cracked the rock to the side of the man’s head.
‘You fucking raped me! You bastard!’ Amanda yelled, the cry resonating off the valley walls around them like some kind of battle cry.
The man was dazed and dropped to his haunches as he removed his ski hat and wiped blood from his temple. He looked up at Amanda as if she was mad.
The younger man put his hands up defensively. ‘Wait, wait – what the hell are you talking about?’
‘He fucking raped me and told me to relax because “I might enjoy it,”’ Amanda bellowed through her clenched teeth. She wasn’t sure what to do next. Her anxiety had been replaced by utter rage.
The older man stood up and took a few steps back, blood on his face, and laughed. ‘Oh, that does sound like me, actually. I didn’t rape you. You were flirting with me all night. And that’s what happens to slags like you.’
Amanda gritted teeth and her eyes welled. Her fingertips dug into the rough surface of the rock as she squeezed it in her hand. She wanted to beat him to death.
‘You’re a disgusting prick!’ Olivia yelled at him.
The younger man frowned. ‘What the fuck, Harv?’
‘That’s what they’re like. All over you one second, taking drinks. Then they pretend they don’t want to shag. It’s a fucking joke. And this hashtag-MeToo business is a fucking joke!’
The younger man looked horrified. ‘I can’t believe you’ve just said that ... There’s always been something wrong with you!’ He turned and started back down the track.
‘Where are you going, Jack?’
Amanda moved forwards a few paces, her three friends now beside her. She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but she wanted him to suffer.
The man put his hand to his head again and looked at the blood.
‘That really hurt. I could have you arrested for assault, you know?’ the man continued to wipe blood from his face and eye.
Kristin opened the pocket where she’d sewn a Canadian flag and pulled out a sheath before removing a six-inch hunting knife.
Nyree and Olivia gasped at the blade, but the man simply laughed. ‘What? You’re going to stab me?’ the man said chortling still.
Kristin moved forwards with the knife. Amanda followed her and the man backed away further.
‘This was going to be a gift for my husband, but I think this is a much worthier purpose. First, you’re going to get on your knees and beg for her forgiveness, and ours too, for being a pathetic low-life piece of scum,’ Kristin said through gritted teeth.
The man smiled, shook his head as he continued to move slowly backwards. ‘No chance.’
‘Apologise to me, right now!’ Amanda spat the words at him.
‘I’ve nothing to apologise for,’ the man said, looking around as if conscious of the decreasing distance between him and the edge of the ridge behind. The four women now lay between him and escape.
‘Get on your knees, now!’ Olivia yelled.
‘I’m not going to apologise for being good in bed.’
That is it! Fuck him! Amanda sprung forwards and kicked him full in the stomach. ‘Apologise to me now, you pathetic wanker!’
The man staggered backwards, lost his footing, and took a step back to right himself, but there was no ground left. He fell.
They watched in horror from the edge of the ridge as his body bounced over and over until it slammed onto the ground below. Everything slowed in Amanda’s head as she watched him tumble and ro
ll over the rocky grey terrain.
And then there was silence as they all gazed down.
‘Fuck!’ gasped Amanda. The enormity of what had just happened hit her.
Olivia gestured to the ridge. ‘We need to get down there.’
Kristin put away her knife and, ever the practical one of the four, was the first to begin to edge down the steep ravine. Amanda followed, inching down step by step, trying to process what she had done. What if he was dead? Then what?
The wind picked up and swirled around them noisily. Amanda couldn’t think straight. If he was injured, what were they going to do? Had anyone seen what had happened?
Amanda nervously glanced up but couldn’t see anyone else around. Thank God! Her foot slipped on some ice and she skidded down a few feet. Regaining her balance, she could see that Kristin was already at the bottom of the gulley and heading for the man who appeared to be unconscious. She had gone down with precision and no fear. That was what fifteen years living in the Canadian wilderness and being a rescue volunteer did for you.
‘He’s breathing, just about.’ Kristin called up to them as they all got to the lower reaches of the slope. She pulled him onto his back.
They all gathered around him. The man’s face and neck were covered in blood and there was a nasty gash to the side of his head where Amanda had hit him.
‘His breathing is very shallow, pulse is slow. There could be internal bleeding,’ Kristin explained.
‘What do we do? I didn’t ...’ Amanda asked. She hadn’t meant to kill him. It was all her fault.
‘You were provoked. This man raped you and then laughed about it in your face. He deserves to die!’ Kristin said angrily.
‘Kristin!’ Olivia exclaimed, shocked.
‘Are we going to get help?’ Kristin asked.
There was silence as the four women looked at each other. Amanda knew that morally they should try to help him if he was still alive. But what if he recovered and did it again? She knew they were all thinking the same thing.
‘What are we going to say happened?’ Olivia said seriously.
‘If he recovers, he will say that Amanda attacked him, we threatened him and Amanda kicked him over the edge,’ Nyree said in a very worried voice.
‘Olivia, what could that mean?’ Kristin asked. Olivia was only a family solicitor, but she was still legally trained.
‘I don’t know! Manslaughter? We could all get a prison sentence. Amanda could be charged with attempted murder. I don’t know ...’ Olivia frantically explained. ‘But I do know it’ll be a nightmare for all of us.’
Amanda and the others took in the consequences of his recovery.
‘That can’t happen, can it?’ Kristin said, looking at them all.
Amanda didn’t know exactly what Kristin meant, but she feared they were heading down a very dark road.
‘We can’t leave him here to die. It could take days.’ Olivia was horrified.
‘Then we do it now,’ Kristin said, moving her gloved hands to Harvey Pearson’s throat and starting to apply pressure.
‘Don’t be stupid! We can’t kill him!’ Olivia yelled.
‘Shut up, Olivia!’ Nyree barked.
‘Do you want to go to prison, Olivia? What are your kids going to do? Do you want Amanda to spend a decade in prison for attacking the man who raped her?’ Kristin yelled back at her.
‘I agree. We have to do it. It makes me feel sick, but Amanda can’t go to prison. That’s not going to happen,’ Nyree said.
Amanda put her hands over Kristin’s. ‘We all do it together.’
The others followed suit, hand on hand. Amanda closed her eyes as she felt her friends’ hands against hers. She felt physically sick.
And after a minute, it was done. He was dead. They sat staring out at the view in shock and disbelief.
Amanda looked up at the sky. The world seemed to have changed colour. What just happened didn’t feel real. But none of them would ever be the same again.
CHAPTER 32
Feeling increasingly frantic, Ruth continued to search Gates’s personal things, looking for something that would give a hint to where Ella was being kept. It could well be fruitless and a waste of time, but she needed to keep busy. She needed to feel that she was doing something useful. The anxiety sat in her stomach like a nagging, cancerous growth.
Winter sunlight dappled the floor and table where she sat, and she could feel the warmth of the sun on her feet. Sitting back to clear her mind and focus, she cast her gaze to the half dozen or so photos of Ella around the room. Aged six, when she had just learnt to ride a bike by the pond on Clapham Common. An off-guard moment at Bestival in her mid-teens, when she flatly refused to ever have her photo taken. A moment later, Sarah had photobombed the shots and Ella had gone off in a teenage strop. The three of them spent that afternoon drinking watered-down cider and jumping around to Rudimental.
Feeling choked by the memories, she dabbed the beginnings of tears from her eyes and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She forced herself to focus on what needed to be done and sifted through more photographs that smelt stale, like the old paperback novels she read as a kid.
Ruth ran through what she knew and what might be guessed at. So far, Gates had been drawn to places that he knew well or he had some form of attachment to. Where he lived, where he had killed and buried his victims, even the aqueduct, were all along the Dee Valley. It was a pattern that Gates hadn’t deviated from so far.
Taking a wedding photograph out of an envelope, Ruth was astonished to see that Kerry was heavily pregnant. How was that possible? Where was the baby? Was that the child that Gates had made a vague reference to? ‘A child for a child,’ Gates had said. It made her shudder. But there was something about Gates’s phrasing, ‘our child,’ that seemed relevant. It was clearly at the forefront of Gates’s mind at that moment.
Ruth traced her finger over Kerry’s bump on the photograph. What had happened to the baby that Kerry was carrying? Had the baby died being born? Had the child died after that? She remembered no photographs of any children at the Gateses’ home. In fact, it had been something that had struck her, and she had drawn a mental conclusion that they were one of the unfortunate couples who couldn’t have children. But it seems that something else had happened.
Shuffling through the photos from that period, she looked for signs of when the pregnancy was no longer visible or any sign of children. There were photographs of Kerry without a pregnancy bump but the photos weren’t dated. There weren’t any photographs of a baby or a child. Moving through the bits and bobs, she came across a folded piece of paper. She opened it and saw a professional pencil sketch of Gates and Kerry together. It was the sort of thing that you might have done at the seaside, especially a few decades ago. It had a date scrawled in the bottom-right-hand corner – 10/6/95, Porthmadog. Shuffling through the papers that she had already looked at, she came across something that seemed like an official wedding photograph. It was electronically dated on the back in small black numbers – 5/6/95. The sketch had been made five days after the wedding, on what might have been their honeymoon. However, the sketch was only of their heads and shoulders, so there was no clue as to whether Kerry was pregnant.
Did the missing child have any bearing on where Gates and Ella were? Ruth’s copper instinct said that it did. Rising from the table to get more coffee and go outside for a smoke, Ruth knocked the table. The first few chimes of a clockwork toy played. Its tune sounded eerie in the silence of the house. Gazing into the box, she saw a pink-coloured jewellery box that she had disregarded in favour of the papers and photos. It had the word Princess written on the front in ornate, swirling writing.
Picking the box up gently, she opened it. A tiny plastic ballerina started to pirouette clockwise and the tune began again. Small trays and compartments, all of which were empty, had been covered in soft pink felt. As she went to close the box, Ruth noticed that the mirror on the underside of the lid wasn’t fitted properly. Edging t
he mirror away from the pink lining, she could see that something had been placed behind. A document.
Opening it, she saw it was a birth certificate for a Heidi Laura Gates. The date of birth was the 7 June 1995. Three days before the sketch she had just looked at. Kerry Gates had given birth to a baby girl called Heidi on the 7 June 1995. Behind that was another piece of paper of a similar size. Certificate of the entry of death. Heidi Laura Gates had died on the 11 June 1995, aged just four days old. Cause of death was sudden infant death syndrome.
Ruth scanned to the bottom of the certificate. The place of death was listed as Tyddyn Llwyn.
Grabbing her laptop, Ruth typed in the address. The listings came up to show that there was a large holiday park – Borthrodyn Holiday Park – there, near Porthmadog. Under the availability tab, it just read Closed For Christmas.
Is that where Gates was hiding Ella?
WHAT WERE THEY GOING to do? Nick was struggling to process what Amanda had just told him. He was crushed by the enormity of it. He could see the pain on her face as she sat on the sofa looking at the floor. None of the clichés, no words, nothing could explain quite how he had felt when he heard about that day on Snowdon.
The irony was that it had been a complete coincidence that Amanda came to AA the day they met. Not surprisingly, she had drunk to the point of blackout every day after Harvey Pearson’s murder. Or manslaughter. So Nick was wrong, coincidences do happen.
Trying to put together everything in his head, they had sat in silence for nearly twenty minutes. The woman he loved had been raped by a man who, when confronted, had laughed in her face. If Nick had been there that day, with that knowledge, he would have killed him too. Right there, on the mountain top, with his bare fucking hands. Chucked his dead body down the ravine.
He gritted his teeth just thinking about it. If that was what his old ‘friend’ Harvey Pearson was capable of, then the world was a far better place without him.
However, Nick was a police officer. Amanda had kept the truth from him. She had effectively lied to him since they met. But did he blame her? Not really. By the way, my friends and I killed the man whose murder you’re investigating.
The Dee Valley Killings Page 24