by L. J. Hutton
By the time he got up to the farm cottage he could barely contain his excitement, but that was spoiled by finding the girls dishevelled, tear-streaked and snotty, and smelling of urine from where they had wet themselves. That wasn’t what he wanted, not at all! They should be pretty and perfect and smelling of talcum powder or nice bubble bath! Still woozy from the drug, at least they were compliant when he hauled them out one at a time and stood them in the old tin bath he’d found. Washing them down was a new and thrilling experience. Who had known that their skin would be so soft? And with their hair combed and them dressed in the fairy costumes he’d bought, they were once again as delectable as he’d dreamed they would be.
It was a shame he could only take them out one at a time to take his photographs, but he recognised that he wasn’t experienced enough with children to be able to handle two at a time. But for the rest of the day, Justin was in seventh heaven. The next day was a nightmare of dramatically different proportions. Now fully alert, the girls kicked, screamed, clawed and punched, and not even a good spanking – which he enjoyed immensely – calmed them down. In the end, all he could do was to spike their bottled drinks that he tossed into each room along with the packet of sandwiches, and hope that that would do the trick.
By the end of the third day, Justin had had enough. They obviously hadn’t been the right girls to take. He’d made a big mistake there. And even his photographs weren’t good enough to share on the dark web, so it had been a waste of time and effort all round. What to do with them, though? He couldn’t take them back, not now. They’d seen his face, for one thing, and they were shrewish enough to be able to give a decent description of him to the police, naughty little madams – for he recognised that he’d crossed the line into a very dark world in taking them.
Only one thing for it, they would have to disappear, and it must look like an accident. So the next day, he made them get back into their school uniforms with assurances that he was taking them back now. But another dosed bottle of the luridly coloured stuff the kids drank these days ensured that they were soon docile again. At that point he took them out one at a time, picking them up and hoisting them over his shoulder. It was hard going, slogging up the steep slope to the top of the old quarry, but he’d checked it out before, and knew that it was a steep drop. With not a second thought, he dumped his ‘disappointment’ onto the ground and then rolled her off the edge, not even bothering to see where she went before going back for the second one. Nobody would survive a fall like that. And after he’d disposed of the second girl, he didn’t even bother going into the bottom of the quarry to look. It was their fault, he’d already decided. He would have looked after them properly if they’d behaved, but instead he’d now have to start from scratch.
What he never knew was that it was Claerwyn who found the girls’ bodies, the locked cottage, and realised what must have happened. And there and then Claerwyn resolved to make him pay. She didn’t manage to work her way into his life soon enough to save a third girl, snatched from farther away, but she was on hand to get more of a view of what he was doing in the cottage. What neither she nor Justin could have predicted was the third girl having an adverse reaction to the Rohypnol and dying before Justin was done with her. And so just at the point when Claerwyn had been about to break the cottage door down, she’d heard Justin sobbing,
“No! No! You’re not supposed to die yet! Wake up! Come on, wake up, we haven’t played our games yet.”
And when she looked in through the filthy glass of the small window, she saw him sitting on the floor, rocking and crying like a small child himself. With there being nothing she could do to save the child now, Claerwyn had slipped away, but the next morning she had walked up to him as he was loading up his car, beautiful and pale in the morning sunlight, as unspoiled as one of the wild flowers in the grass, and from that moment, Justin was hooked.
She had to let him go home, but by the time he did, she knew that he’d be back, and she’d already set up a meeting place with him. All it took was a few of those meetings and she was sure that she could lure him to the orchard at the right time. And even better, he’d not had the chance to prey on any more children, of that she was sure, because when he was with her he was telling her everything without restraint.
So when the new moon had come around, Justin had come to the orchard thinking he was about to partake of an ancient fertility ritual. There she was, pale, unsullied and gorgeous, beckoning him into amongst the trees, and then telling him to sit down at the base of one of them. But then as she began to glide towards him, something changed. Gone was the sweet and pure Claerwyn, and in her place was something more terrible, rising up and looming over him. Her voice seemed to reverberate through every bone in his body, and she spared him nothing. As he watched the diaphanous gown flying wildly in a wind which only touched her, those eyes like beautiful stars became windows into the dark night, and it was sucking him in and down into a very different world. He lost control of both bladder and bowels, and when he couldn’t pant any harder his heart seemed to explode in his chest.
Chapter 7
BY THE TIME TIM CHESTERTON arrived, Jane Stennet and the team had established a path up to the cottage. However, the light was now gone, and so the decision was made that the cottage would wait until daylight now that the site would be under guard as an ongoing crime scene. The little girls were the priority, and somebody high up must have pulled a string or two, because Bill was beyond relieved to see Carol’s car pull up at the end of the ever expanding line of vehicles trailing down the hill.
With Carol and Tim arriving almost together, Bill took the time to talk them through what had happened. As he spoke he could see Tim’s face becoming more and more appalled, to the extent that he felt compelled to end with, “You didn’t drop the ball, Tim. How long after you found Pickersleigh’s body was it that you got the hint that he was a paedo’, eh? Weeks, if not months. You weren’t to know at the time that you needed to be looking at every school in the area. I just followed a hunch based on stuff you never even knew.”
“But you’re sure in your own mind that these are linked to Justin Pickersleigh,” Carol said, making a statement, not questioning Bill.
“In my mind? Without a doubt. I may even ask the locals if there’s a nearby hotel or pub I can stop at overnight, because I want to be here first thing when they get into that cottage. I have the nastiest feeling, Tim, that this is where that new stuff Pickersleigh was buying ended up.”
Tim was looking grim as he recounted, “A mattress, some sheets and a couple of pillows, and a cheap single duvet. God, how did I not see that? It’s what he’d need if he’d been planning an abduction. So do you think he grabbed both girls because he could? That only one of them was his intended target?”
“Did you have a chance in the short time you had with the laptop to get any sense what Pickersleigh’s ‘type’ was?” Bill wondered.
“Oh, definitely blonde and fair-skinned ...and not plump, either.”
Bill grunted in disgust. “Then I think little Amy Winters was doubly unlucky, because she was a redhead, going by the description in the papers. You’ll be able to tell us more, Carol, but in terms of the abduction, that bastard Pickersleigh treated them as a ‘grab one, get one free’ offer.”
What nobody was expecting was for the team to discover a third little girl as they combed the quarry for evidence. She hadn’t been thrown from so high up, it seemed, but it made everyone doubly careful, wanting to be very sure there was no sign of any others. Both he and Tim hung on until Carol’s team had managed to get the girls’ bodies extracted, but then a local constable accompanied Bill into New Radnor and got him set up at a hotel there, while Tim returned home, but with the promise that he too would be back to see the cottage opened up.
Come the morning, everyone was back as early as they could manage, given the long drive some of them had to make, but even so, it was midday before they got access to the cottage, the whole area around it
having had to be checked for evidence first. Yet Pickersleigh seemed to have been meticulous about not throwing rubbish around, and so with nothing beyond tyre marks to match, they were able to press on to the cottage itself. A pair of bolt cutters made short work of the padlock and then they were inside.
As the forensics team established a working pathway inside, Bill once again got suited up, determined to at least get a good view of what had been going on before he left the experts to do their job. What revolted everyone were the urine stained dressing-up costumes of fairies and princesses left tossed to one side. There was something positively obscene about the thought of children terrified out of their wits in what ought to have been innocent playthings.
“That fits with the stuff we found on Pickersleigh’s laptop,” Tim said grimly. “We didn’t get the chance to look at much, but the photos he downloaded the most ...well let’s just say he was into wings and magic wands, with not a lot else on.”
“The things that go through some folks’ heads,” Bill sighed, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “What was this idiot thinking he was going to do? It looks like he might have been planning on keeping at least another girl here in the future because of that second locked bedroom, but it’s not kitted out at all. There’s just what must have been his mattress here in the main room, and the one the girls must have had to share in the first bedroom. So I reckon that supports the theory that he was opportunistic in grabbing two girls the first time. Or was that other lass the first one?” He sighed. “Come on, Tim, let’s leave the experts to get on with it. We’re just cluttering up the place now.”
Outside, though, he was glad to find Jane Stennett had returned and looking less shaken now that the girls’ bodies had been taken away.
“Jane, would you do me a favour? As soon as possible, would you get the team to work their way on up the track and around to the top of the quarry?”
Jane nodded. “Already with you on that one, gov’. You reckon they were thrown off the top, don’t you?”
“I do, and for two reasons. I think Pickersleigh was dumb enough to believe he could fool us into thinking that the girls’ deaths were accidental. That they simply tripped and went off the edge...”
“...Arrogant twat!” Tim muttered darkly.
“...Won’t argue with that, mate. But also because, having seen how bloody hard it was for us to both get in to the girls, and then get their bodies out, I just don’t see Pickersleigh carrying them in there on his own – and there’s no hint he had help.”
Jane was nodding along with him. “I’d thought that last night. If we were struggling with four of us trying to lift a body bag over the rocks, he’d never have got across there with one of them slung over his shoulder. But then do you think that that’s what he was counting on? That he’d seen what a rough and tumble this place was, a veritable ankle-breaker, and knew that it wouldn’t be the kind of secret place the local kids came into for a quiet shag where their parents wouldn’t catch them at it?”
Bill was impressed with how quick Jane was picking this up. “I think you’re absolutely right,” he praised her. “The quarry down the road has been swept clean of rubble, quite possibly by the local farmers scavenging hard core to fill in potholes in their tracks, but because it’s got a fairly even floor, it’s got its fair share of empty cans and used condoms. You couldn’t hide a thing down there. And I’m wondering whether Pickersleigh was crafty enough to have at least worked out that he’d be blurring the lines a bit by coming across the border, and had scouted this place out long before he finished planning how he was going to grab Sophie Granger.”
“I suppose I’d better go and break the bad news to their parents,” Tim sighed. “At least we’ve got two names, though the other kid might take a bit longer to identify. God, but I hate this part of the job. I know I’m finally giving them closure, but at the same time you just know that you’re crushing whatever hope they had left that their kid would come home again.”
“I’ll come with you,” Bill volunteered. “It’ll make more sense if they realise that this has come about because of something that was crossing not only county, but also country, borders. Hopefully we, as the police, won’t have quite so much egg on our faces if they do.”
“That’s good of you, and thank you,” Tim said, “but it’s my face that the egg should hit. We should have done better.”
By the end of the day, having left two grieving families behind them who could do nothing more now than plan their daughters’ funerals, Bill was glad to head back up into Shropshire. He’d have been even happier to go properly home, but that wouldn’t be an option for another week. Wally Mitford was back from his anniversary holiday, tanned and full of how great it had been, but Bill realised that Wally was another just marking time until he could retire. So he’d understood the plea from above for him to wait until Si Ralph was back on his feet too, and could at least offer Ray some moral support, even if he wasn’t up to the more physical side of the job yet. He was even more relieved when he was informed that the territorial bun fight over who got the case of the two little girls wouldn’t include him.
“It’s between Powys and Tim Chesterton now,” his chief inspector, Suzanne, informed him. “You’re doing enough keeping things together in TPU G. Good call on finding the girls, Bill, but it’s time for those with direct links to take over.”
If she’d been expecting him to argue, she must have been pleasantly surprised when she heard his sigh of relief, and “Thank heavens for that! I don’t envy them that one, truly I don’t. There was something very murky going on at that site, and I’ve got enough of that on my plate dealing with the Costas. Every day we’re getting badgered by calls from Marissa Costa, demanding to know what we’re doing to find the killer of her ‘darling boy.’
“Of course it would help a lot if his bloody brothers would come clean as to what they were up to, and where and when Sanay must have met this strange woman. Something drew him way out of his normal patch, and I don’t believe for one second that it was a sudden compulsion to get fit and out into the wilds. But we can hardly scour Shropshire on the basis of a tall dark woman with no name.”
“And nothing’s come out of the autopsy or forensics?”
“Nothing that we didn’t know already. What’s worrying me, gov’, is that we might’ve got some sort of vigilante out there. Someone who was already several steps ahead of us in identifying what both these miserable scrotes were up to, and had decided they needed dealing with. But how the hell they picked up on two such disparate characters has me baffled, if that really was what happened.”
“Well at least you’ve brought some closure for the Winters and Granger families,” Suzanne consoled him. “If more comes to light once you’re back with us, it’s up to TPU G to sort out, not you, it’s their case.”
Yet at the weekend, Bill returned home for what he hoped would be the last brief visit, but managed to catch Carol and Sylvia at home.
“Why don’t you come over for dinner?” Sylvia invited him. “You and Carol can talk freely here, and I’ll cook.”
“If that includes your chilli, you’re on!” Bill declared, knowing just how good that was.
“Chilli it is, then,” Sylvia laughed, and later on that day, Bill walked up the river to their pretty cottage at Hallow, a village more distinguished by its name than any great separation in housing from Worcester.
With their courtyard being sheltered, and the weather throwing the best of the autumn sunshine at them, Bill was happy to sit and eat outside. And once the food was cleared away, and Sylvia had topped up their wine glasses, he felt able to brooch the subject of the girls’ autopsies.
“Hmmm,” Carol began, “Let me start by saying that there’s not a shadow of doubt now that they were Justin Pickersleigh’s victims. I don’t know whether I should be glad that he was such an inept fool, but his DNA was all over them and the cottage. In a way, that makes it all the more tragic that those kids should fall into his clutche
s so easily. I’ve had a few more conversations with Tim Chesterton, you know, and it turns out that one of the problems with the original investigation into the pair of girls’ disappearance was what you can only call the hopeless incompetence of the school they were at.”
“As bad as that?”
“Oh Lord, Bill, what else would you call it when they weren’t even missed until one of the other kids called the teachers’ attention to the fact that they hadn’t come up to the dormitory at night? They then spent several hours looking around the school, until they woke up to the fact that the girls had last been seen way back before lunchtime during the sports’ day. Hours, Bill, hour upon hour lost when you lot could have been searching for them. Even worse, the sports were just a preliminary to the main event planned for the following week, which was when all the parents would have been there, so this time there wasn’t a single eagle-eyed parent about. It was just those teachers who taught sports trying to keep track of more than fifty girls, some of whom were well used to bunking off sports. The enquiry into what went wrong blamed a catastrophic shortage of teachers throughout the school, and it didn’t reopen a few weeks back at the start of September when the other schools went back – which I guess tells you just how bad things had got.
“And I do feel sorry for the parents, but in truth, anyone who sent their kids there had to have been more worried about getting them out from under their feet than anything else. It really was the worst sort of private school. Tim was telling me that compared to there, the local comp’ his kids go to looks like the pinnacle of academia – and that’s saying something when that one only just escaped going into ‘special measures’ at its last Ofsted inspection!”
“Good grief,” Bill sighed, “there’s no hope if places like that are going to make it so easy for the ungodly. Thank heavens it sounds like a massive exception to the rule, because most school are just the opposite.”