A Date With Death

by Mark Roberts

  132

  3.05 pm

  The sea.

  The edges of waves pushed on to the shore and into the middle reaches of Francesca Christie’s dream. She was in the basement and The Ghoul stood looking at her, wearing Annie Boyd’s face and scalp.

  Francesca looked into The Ghoul’s eyes lurking beneath Annie’s skin and she saw the two dots of light that she’d seen reflected in her rear-view mirror as she’d driven at knifepoint down Riverside Drive. The dots exploded into a hailstorm of light, falling from pitch darkness behind which lurked the faces of people she saw every day and the interiors of vendors’ houses she walked around, measuring, describing, writing up, conducting viewings, selling, beneath a surface of white light that made the images dance.

  The sound of the waves turned into a shushing noise and she knew she was listening to a sonic memory from before her earliest conscious recall: her mother shushed her as she jigged her on her shoulder, lulling her into sleep when she was little more than a newborn baby.

  Tears streamed down her face, tears of happiness at the deep stamp of love that she had known all her life.

  ‘Shush,’ said the waves. ‘Shush,’ said her mother.

  She saw her mother’s face as she placed her down in the cot, the night light picking out her features, her mother yet not her mother, her mother as a much younger woman, her mother as a version of herself.

  ‘I love you, Francesca Christie.’ The words that followed her from wakefulness into the deep darkness of infant sleep.

  Snap.

  Francesca Christie woke up and had no idea of whether it was day or night, evening or morning.

  ‘My mum. My poor mother.’

  She speculated at the levels of anxiety her mother had been living through in the time that she had been missing, and her feelings rocketed from sorrow to heights of rage.

  Francesca held on to the deepest of breaths, didn’t feel the cold, the hunger or the thirst, just the rage that filled her from her scalp to her toenails.

  Hold on to the breath! Hold on to the rage! Hold on, hold on, hold on…

  The waves came and she knew she was near a beach.

  Der. Der. A train.

  The land and the sea.

  The air was salty.

  The sea.

  Shush.

  133

  3.15 pm

  Sergeant Harris opened the door to Norma Maguire’s cell and Clay entered.

  ‘Ms Maguire?’

  She didn’t move or respond.

  ‘Your time’s running out,’ said Clay, standing over her, staring down at her. ‘I know you can hear me.’

  Norma Maguire’s arms hung over the sides of her wheelchair, her head was down and her eyes were shut. Clay sat on the bench close to her.

  ‘I saw your gun and I realised you weren’t who you claimed to be. Alarm bells went off in my head. I looked in your bag. I saw your warrant card, and I knew I was totally out of my depth. I panicked. I left you where you were.’

  Norma Maguire opened her eyes as she lifted her head.

  ‘Are you sorry for Francesca Christie? Are you sorry that you abducted her?’

  ‘I have remorse. She could kill me with a sideways glance.’

  ‘One thing at a time, Ms Maguire. Why did you steal Francesca’s doll?’

  In her wheelchair, she started to turn a circle.

  ‘I wanted to be close to her.’

  ‘Edgar’s told us everything.’

  Something horrible shifted from Norma Maguire’s brain and it cast shadows across her eyes.

  ‘Shut up, Norma. Shut up your fat, ugly mouth,’ said Norma Maguire, in a mean theatrical voice. ‘Shut up your fat, ugly face. You look and sound like your fucking bastard father.’

  ‘Were these your mother’s words?’

  ‘Yes. Keep your ugly face out of my sight and stop polluting my beauty.’

  Norma Maguire’s wheelchair tipped forward and she spilled out of it on to the cell floor.

  Clay stooped and extended her hands towards her.

  ‘Keep your hands off me.’

  Norma Maguire crawled away from the chair into the corner of the room. On its side, the right wheel spun to a halt as Norma came to a dead end.

  ‘You’re moving your lower limbs, Ms Maguire,’ said Clay.

  From the waist up, Norma raised her body, supporting her weight with her hands against the cell walls, her face buried in the corner.

  Clay walked a few paces towards her and said, ‘Stand up!’

  Sobbing, Norma lifted her left knee, placing the weight on the sole of her foot. She did the same on her right side and, in a handful of moments, pulled herself up with her hands against the wall.

  She turned.

  ‘Walk with me, Ms Maguire.’

  She began walking in a tight circle, her hands between her armpits, her eyes shut, her face knotted.

  ‘I’ll tell you where Fran is. I’ll tell you everything but just leave me alone.’

  134

  3.53 pm

  Clay looked in her wing mirror as she drove from Regent Road on to Crosby Road South, saw Riley, Hendricks and Stone in the three cars directly behind her.

  Pulling up at a red light, Clay looked over her shoulder at the back seat, saw Kizzy next to a folded dressing gown. She felt the weight of a set of keys in her pocket as she pressed play on her iPhone on a recording she had made of her last conversation with Norma Maguire.

  ‘We found the clothes Francesca was last seen in on CCTV. They were in your wardrobe. Did you give her alternative clothing?’

  ‘No.’

  Norma Maguire started humming.

  ‘Where is Francesca Christie? You still haven’t told me.’

  ‘Oxford Drive, Liverpool 22.’

  ‘In a house on Oxford Drive?’

  ‘Oxford Drive.’

  ‘Give me a post code?’

  ‘L22 1BX.’

  ‘What number?’

  ‘Not a number. Not a house.’

  Crosby. Close to the beach. Clay recalled the moment of mental clarity back in Interview Suite 1. She took the keys from her pocket.

  She pressed stop on the recording and looked ahead as she listened to directions from her satnav.

  Clay opened the window to let in the cold and let out the mounting claustrophobia.

  Birds swooped over the sand and the sea crashed into the shore as she turned on to Oxford Drive.

  In the distance, Clay saw a white van parked outside a semi-detached house.

  She accelerated.

  135

  4.11 pm

  As Clay and Riley hurried towards the white van, Clay said, ‘They’ve swapped the licence plate.’

  ‘That’s how they’ve dodged the ANPRs and CCTV cameras.’

  ‘Francesca Christie? Francesca? Police.’ Clay banged gently on the back doors of the van. ‘My name’s DCI Eve Clay. It’s the police. Speak to me.’

  The silence that followed grew more worrying with each passing moment.

  ‘Francesca?’ said Clay. ‘I’m a policewoman, talk to me.’

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘You’re perfectly safe, Francesca. We’ve got the people who’ve been holding you captive. They’re in our custody and no longer have any power to harm you.’

  ‘Where? Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in a white Ford Transit van on Oxford Drive in Crosby. Can I open the door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Clay turned the lock and pulled back the right-hand door, took a deep breath and focused on Francesca, tied up and naked on the floor.

  ‘The woman coming into the van right now is my colleague, Detective Sergeant Gina Riley.’

  ‘Francesca?’ said Riley, stepping up and into the back of the van. ‘I’m going to untie your hands and feet. I have your dressing gown with me. Once you’re untied I’m going to help you into the dressing gown. Do you think you’re able to stand on your feet?’

  ‘My legs feel dead. I feel dead from t
he waist down. I can feel my fingers and hands. I’ve got sensation in my arms.’

  ‘You’re cold, you’ve been tied up. The feeling will come back to your legs and feet.’

  Clay watched Francesca blinking rapidly in response to the street lights flickering into life against the darkening sky and wondered if she’d seen any natural light at all during the time she’d been in captivity.

  As Riley untied Francesca’s feet and hands, Clay flashed torchlight into the confined space and took in the things in the back of the van. She felt her pulse quicken as she realised that the contents of Norma Maguire’s basement were stored in the back of a van on a quiet side street near Crosby Beach.

  Two filthy mattresses were propped up either side of the van and the smell drifting from them was fetid.

  Clay saw a metal table and on it a range of surgical implements. Coldness passed through her as she faced the table where the tools used to scalp and skin the faces of the dead women were gathered. On a shelf beneath the tabletop, chains were piled up.

  A washing line ran from the doors of the van to the back of the driver’s cab. In the middle of the line was a sheet draped evenly over either side.

  On the floor of the van, Riley helped Francesca to sit up and slipped her arms into the dressing gown. Francesca looked over her shoulder at the metal table.

  ‘Who abducted me?’

  ‘A man called Edgar McKee and his sister, Norma Maguire.’

  ‘Norma Maguire?’ She spoke her name as if all the reason on the planet had vanished in an instant. ‘Where are they?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘McKee and Maguire are in the cells in Trinity Road police station. Do you know Edgar McKee?’

  ‘No,’ said Francesca, looking deeply into the street light that broke up the mounting darkness.

  Clay stepped up and into the back of the van.

  ‘I’ve got something for you, something that Norma Maguire stole from you.’

  ‘What did she steal from me?’

  ‘Kizzy.’

  ‘Kizzy? She went into my house and stole my doll? Why was I so surprised when you told me that Norma was involved in all this madness?’

  Clay handed the rag doll to Francesca and she pressed her face against Kizzy’s body.

  ‘Take your time, Francesca,’ said Riley. ‘Wait for the feeling to come back into your limbs.’

  Francesca rubbed her thighs with the palms of her hands.

  ‘I can feel pins and needles in my feet,’ she said.

  Clay’s torch bounced from the metal table for a split second.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Eve?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Clay, quietly.

  Wind screamed from the Irish Sea and, as the van rocked under its force, there was a noise in the confined space, metal against metal, as the surgical tools clattered on the table.

  Riley stood up and nodded at the cover hanging over the washing line.

  ‘I want some fresh air,’ said Francesca.

  Clay and Riley positioned themselves either side of Francesca and moved her to the open door at the back of the van.

  ‘Drop your legs, Francesca. Give your circulation a boost.’

  Francesca’s feet touched the tarmac.

  Clay moved back into the van, lifted the cloth that hung on the washing line and inspected the eyeless faces and scalps of the dead women. She felt as if she’d been hit in the core by an iron fist as, one by one, images of their scalped and faceless corpses prepared to haunt her.

  A cocktail of formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and phenol rose from the soft skins under Clay’s nose and she worked out that Maguire and McKee had used the chemicals to preserve and soften the stolen flesh of their victims.

  Inside her head, she counted, one, two, three, and the names Sandra O’Day, Annie Boyd and Amanda Winton screamed through her mind.

  ‘Are you looking at the masks, DCI Clay?’ asked Francesca.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The Ghoul used to come down to see me wearing the masks. The Ghoul preferred Annie Boyd over the other two. I recognised Annie from her picture in the paper. The light wasn’t great in the basement but I’m thinking about the shape of The Ghoul, from the neck down. I thought it was a man but I was wrong. The Ghoul was Norma Maguire.’

  ‘Francesca, I’m dialling your mother on my iPhone. Talk to her.’

  Clay handed her iPhone to Francesca.

  ‘It’s ringing out, Francesca.’

  ‘Mum, it’s me. I’m OK. DCI Clay and DS Riley have rescued me.’

  Clay heard Margaret Christie cry out in joy.

  Margaret spoke and Francesca replied, ‘I’ve got some bumps and bruises but I’m OK. I’m OK! Don’t worry…’

  Clay lifted the cover off the washing line, hung it near the faces and scalps, and took pictures on her iPhone.

  ‘Mum, I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

  She recognised the three women from photographs she had seen and her mind went spinning into Annie Boyd’s home and imagined the agony her parents were living through.

  ‘And, Mum, I love you. And I’m so, so sorry for what I’ve put you through. I’m OK, I swear. See you soon. Love you too.’

  She handed the iPhone back to Clay.

  ‘Margaret,’ said Clay, but the line was dead.

  ‘She was going to kill me, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And scalp me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The feeling’s coming back into my legs,’ said Francesca.

  The sea lapped against the shore and an ambulance turned the corner on to Oxford Drive.

  ‘Don’t move, Francesca,’ said Clay. ‘The paramedics are here.’

  Francesca turned her head.

  ‘Don’t look back, Francesca!’

  She turned her head, eyed the things in the back of the van, half-lit by the sodium street lights.

  ‘Look away, Francesca!’

  She looked away and took a deep breath.

  Francesca Christie’s scream cut through the darkness of advancing night.

  136

  6.30 pm

  In Interview Suite 1, Clay and Hendricks faced Norma Maguire. She looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘Your brother has made a serious allegation against you, Ms Maguire,’ said Clay. ‘Edgar told me that you drove your mother to visit her friend on Mather Avenue on the night she died. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When you were on Mather Avenue that night, did you pretend that the car had broken down and ask your mother to check if the headlights were working?’

  She nodded.

  ‘As she stood in the road, did you reverse backwards suddenly and drive at her at speed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you ever have any feelings of remorse because you’d murdered your mother?’

  ‘No. I hated her.’

  Clay looked at Norma Maguire and said nothing, sustaining the silence in the room.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Norma Maguire.

  ‘Did your mother write Edgar out of her will?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did she do that, Norma?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You were the executor of your mother’s will. In the last years of her life she had dementia. Edgar told us. His mother didn’t write him out of that will. You did. You changed the will so that everything went to you. You got your demented mother to sign that amended will so that you got the lot. What do you say to that? Answer the question about your mother’s will,’ insisted Clay.

  Silence.

  ‘Who was the sole beneficiary of your mother’s will?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Look at me, Ms Maguire. I’d like to go a little further down the timeline with you.’

  Clay placed a set of travel receipts on the table and spread them out.

  ‘Read them back to me, Ms Maguire. Where to, where exactly, and when? Can I translate your silence into an admission of guilt?’ />
  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Liverpool John Lennon Airport to Pisa Airport.’ Clay pushed the receipt closer to Norma Maguire. ‘Then, by train from Pisa to Florence. Date. 4th July, 2019. Shall I outline the date and destination of the return journey? OK, it was the first train out of Florence to Pisa on the morning of 9th July and then a flight back to Liverpool from Pisa, the day after Sarah Ezra was stabbed to death in the toilet of a pizzeria near The Fountain Of Neptune. Why did you kill Sarah Ezra? It was Richard who walked out on you.’

  ‘Revenge. He loved her. I wanted him to suffer,’ said Norma Maguire.

  ‘Let’s move further down that timeline. This year. This month and the summer beforehand. According to Edgar, and I’d have to say I agree with him one hundred per cent, you had a lot of financial clout and you used that power over him. Did he groom your victims over the phone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he abduct them for you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And when you’d strangled them, did Edgar skin their faces and scalp them for you?’

  She held up a hand, showed the flat of it to Clay. ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Did he treat their skins with formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde and phenol to preserve them and make their skins ultra-soft to the touch, lifelike? £10,000 a time. You paid him for grooming the women over the phone, the women he went on to scalp. We’re checking details of his bank account right now, all those transfers of money from your account to his. We’ve got all the travel receipts when you paid for him to come back from Holland. True or false?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘But you didn’t want him to put his hands on Francesca Christie, did you? You didn’t want anyone else touching her, only you. Have you got anything to say about Francesca Christie? Because you can walk. You could abduct her. You’ve lived as an elective cripple for years.’

  Norma Maguire’s hairline became a physical seam where beads of sweat started pouring down her forehead.

  ‘When you were admitted to the Royal all those years ago with spinal injuries, the first doctors to see you didn’t call it right. Edgar told us that your mother threw money at the problem and sent you to America for treatment and that it worked. You came back to England but refused to walk, refused to get out of your wheelchair in public. Why?’