He’d return on Monday and put the sale of Edge House into the hands of John Mercer. He’d catch up with Tilly, as he’d told her he would, but then he was done. The only real link he had with this place was Sarah and he had to accept the fact that he’d never know her fate.
The past was dead and gone. It was time to finally bury it.
I drive slowly past Manchester Piccadilly train station, peering through the windscreen at the people coming out through the doors and onto the night-darkened street.
Some of them are commuters, arriving home late with briefcases clutched beneath their arms. Others are travellers who have caught the train here from the airport. They drag loaded suitcases behind them and search for taxis as soon as they come out of the station.
These are not the people I am looking for tonight. The ones I want are those who no longer belong to the world. They are running away from something back home, coming to the city to hide from their past. They are the lost.
They are easy to spot and I see one wander out onto the street. Unlike the people climbing into taxis or walking to the car park to collect their vehicles and drive home, she ambles aimlessly on the pavement. She has nowhere to go, nowhere to be. No one is expecting her arrival and no one will miss her when she vanishes.
I don’t drive over to her immediately. There is no need to hurry. She isn’t going far on foot and even if I do lose her, there are plenty of others just like her.
I speed up slightly and drive past her, watching her in the rear-view mirror. She’s wearing a dark blue jacket, collar pulled up against the rain. A white knitted hat sits on her head, hiding all but a few stray wisps of black hair. Slung over her shoulder is an olive green army rucksack, probably containing everything this girl owns in the world. Her head is bent, eyes on the pavement in front of her trainers.
Her feet must be getting wet. She’ll be easy to entice into the car.
I drive on and turn off the road she’s walking along and take a few back streets so I end up behind her again. She’s still soldiering on in the rain, head bent as if she has a thousand miles ahead of her.
She doesn’t; she has only a few more steps left and then she won’t have to worry about walking anymore. The past she has run away from will never be able to catch up with her.
The loaded syringe sits in the pocket of my door. I reach down and put it on the seat next to my leg, out of view of the passenger side of the car. As I come alongside the girl, I lower the window and speak to her. “Terrible night.”
She doesn’t answer, merely continues trudging on with her head down.
“Do you want a lift?”
Again, she ignores me.
“If you need a bed for the night, I know where you can get one. For free.”
She whirls on me. There is anger in her grey eyes but also a hint of weakness behind it. “Oh yeah? I bet you do.”
“It’s nothing like that,” I say. “Wouldn’t you rather spend the night somewhere warm and dry than shivering in a doorway somewhere?”
“And what’s in it for you?” she askes cynically.
“Nothing. I’d be helping you, that’s all. That’s what I do; I help people.”
She thinks about that for a few seconds while the cold rain hisses down around her. Finally, she says, “Are you one of those religious nutters who’s going to try and convert me into your God-squad?”
I shake my head and laugh. “No, not at all. Honestly, I just want to help, that’s all.”
She turns her head to glance at the street around her and then her gaze shifts to the interior of the car. I can tell she’s weighing up the possible danger of getting into the car against the need to get out of the rain. She shrugs. “All right. But you’d better not try any funny business.”
“No funny business,” I assure her. “Come on, get in.”
She reaches out hesitantly for the door handle. When the door opens, she slides the rucksack off her shoulder and climbs into the car. She rests the rucksack on her knees.
“You’d best put your belt on,” I say, indicating her seat belt.
“No, thanks.”
“You have to put it on or the car is going to be sounding a warning every few seconds and we won’t be able to talk.” I point at the dashboard where a symbol of a person wearing a seatbelt is illuminated red. If I drive off while the symbol is lit, the car will chime repeatedly.
“I don’t want to talk anyway,” she says.
“Come on, don’t be like that. I’m giving you a lift, the least you can do it talk to me.”
She sighs and pulls the belt across her chest. As it clicks home, the symbol on the dashboard dies.
I pull away from the kerb, checking the rear-view mirror. The road is almost deserted and I’m sure no one saw her get into my car. Even if they did, they no one took any notice. This girl is beyond the notice of the world.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She hesitates and then says, “Lily.”
“Is that your real name?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t. Where are you from?”
“Does that matter?” Her face darkens slightly.
“No, I’m just trying to make conversation. I’m guessing it’s a place you’d rather forget.”
“Wow,” she says sarcastically, “you must be psychic.”
I drive east, towards the outskirts of Manchester. She isn’t familiar with the city; she won’t even know we’ve left it behind until we’re in the countryside and heading towards Dark Peak.
“Let me guess,” I say, “you had an argument with your parents. They don’t understand anything about you or your life.”
“You’ve got that right,“ she says with a slight sneer. “Only it isn’t my parents. I only have one parent, my mum. My dad left when I was two or three or something.”
“So you fell out with your mum?”
“Yeah, something like that.” She seems to shrink into the seat and puts her arms around the rucksack as if hugging it will make everything better. It won’t.
“You can tell me, you know. I won’t tell anyone. I don’t even know who you are, do I? I bet your name isn’t even Lily, really, is it?”
She goes quiet for a couple of minutes and then, probably feeling secure behind the anonymity of a false name, says, “My step-dad hits me. He gets pissed a lot and when he’s like that, he’s handy with his fists. My mum gets the worst of it but sometimes he has a go at me as well. I told her she should kick him out but she doesn’t listen. She’s so desperate to have a bloke, she’ll put up with a no-good layabout like him, never mind what happens to her daughter. Well, maybe now she’ll come to her sense. He’ll never hit me again, that’s for sure.”
“No, he won’t,” I say. “Did he…do anything else?”
She looks at me and raises an eyebrow. “You mean have his wicked way with me? Yeah, that’s happened a couple of times.” She shifts her gaze to the darkness beyond the window and her voice becomes low. “I tried to fight him off, you know, but he was too strong. Even when he was pissed, he was too strong.”
I know enough about her now. She’s exactly the type of girl I was looking for tonight. And the fact that she gave me the name Lily is almost too perfect. It’s as if the universe delivered her to me so that I can end her suffering.
“Do you like lilies?” I ask.
She seems taken aback by the sudden change of subject. “What? Yeah, I suppose so. Why?”
“Well, since that’s the name you gave me, I thought there might be a reason. I know it’s not your real name so I was wondering if you liked the flower.”
“I think you’re looking at it a bit too deeply,” she tells me. “I just said the first thing that came into my head.”
“Still, lilies are lovely. Do you know there’s a wildflower called the lily of the valley?”
She shrugs.
“It has white drooping flowers. In fact, now that I think about it, you looked like a li
ly of the valley when you were walking along the pavement with that white hat on your head.”
She doesn’t say anything but shifts farther away from me in her seat, pressing herself against the door.
I take the syringe in my hand and jab it into her leg. The needle punctures her jeans and I press the plunger.
Her eyes go wide and her face twists into a mask of horror. “What?” she gasps. Her hands scrabble for the door handle but the drugs are already beginning to course through her system. Her movements are sluggish and her clawing hand fails to find the handle. It drops to her side at the same time as her head lolls back against the headrest.
Her breathing becomes shallow, as if she is in a deep sleep, which, of course, she is.
I put my foot down, feeling suddenly anxious to get to the woods where I have something special prepared for this girl.
Forty minutes later, I pull over to the side of the deserted road in Dark Peak. The rain has stopped and the clouds are parting, revealing the beauty of the stars. They look down on me like a billion shining eyes as I get out of the car breathe in the fresh air that smells of rain-wet grass and tangy pine.
There’s a wet field by the side of the road and beyond that, the forest.
I go to the boot of the car and take out the piece of board with its yellow nylon sling and a shovel. I place the board on the ground next to the passenger-side door and lower Lily onto it. Then, I put the sling around my waist and move into the field, the board and its slumbering load sliding along on the wet grass behind me. Even the weather is synchronised with my mission, wetting the grass to make my makeshift sleigh slide easily across the field.
The forest waits.
When I reach the trees, I have to leave the board behind and pick Lily up. She’s only a slight thing but it takes me half an hour to get her to the place I have prepared for her. Then I have to go back for her rucksack.
This worries me slightly because I’m not sure how long it will be before the drugs wear off. The concoction is of my own making and its effects aren’t consistent.
But Lily is still asleep when I return to the grave.
Within the deep, oblong-shaped hole beneath the trees, a packing crate will serve as her coffin. I’d like to have an actual coffin for her but the crate is the best I can give her in the circumstances. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what lies beneath the earth, the grave will look beautiful when it is filled in and the flowers are planted.
I remove the crate’s lid, exposing its empty interior. I lay Lily on the edge of the grave and give her a push. She rolls limply into the buried crate. After throwing her rucksack in with her, I replace the lid and use the shovel to pile the earth I dug out of the grave earlier back in. It lands heavily on the crate’s wooden lid.
Eventually, I can’t see the wood at all, only earth. I continue to fill the grave.
When I’m done, I hear a muffled groan come from within the grave. It sounds so far away, I’m not sure if my ears are playing tricks on me.
“Sshh,” I whisper to the newly turned earth. “There’s no need to be scared. You won’t suffer anymore.”
I step back and examine my work. In the black shadow of the night, the grave looks sombre. But in a few days, I’ll return here with wildflower seeds and where there is only dark earth at the moment, there will be an abundance of lilies of the valley.
9
The Journal
It was early Sunday evening when Mitch dropped Leigh off. He parked the Jeep outside her house and went around to the boot to get her case. The weather had stayed fine during their hike on Saturday and also for most of Sunday, only beginning to rain when they’d checked out of the Travelodge and were about to drive back to Leamington Spa. When they hit the motorway, they left the rain behind as they headed south.
As Mitch was unloading Leigh’s things, the door to the house opened and Jess stepped out onto the front step. She offered Mitch a short wave. He returned it and passed the case to Leigh.
“Did you have a nice time?” he asked her.
“A great time.” She grinned and added, “Let’s go hiking again next weekend as well.”
“Sure, if that’s what you want to do. I’ll find somewhere for us to go.”
“We’re going away next weekend to see my mum and dad,” Jess called from the porch. “I told you about it, remember?”
“Oh, yeah.” Mitch had forgotten Leigh was going to see her grandparents in Sussex. “I guess we’ll have to make it the weekend after,” he said.
Leigh nodded. “Okay, Dad.” She hugged him and walked up the drive to her house, the case rolling behind her on its wheels.
“How’d it go in Derbyshire?” Jess asked as Leigh reached the porch.
“It was great. We went on a ten-mile walk and we ate at the pub.”
Mitch was glad Leigh hadn’t mentioned the break-in or the police. She’d tell Jess about those things later, he had no doubt, but at least they weren’t the first things on her mind when she remembered the weekend.
He got into the Jeep, waved at his daughter and ex-wife, and headed across town to his apartment. When he got through the door, he dropped his suitcase, rucksack and walking boots in the hallway and went to the kitchen to brew coffee. While the water was percolating through the coffee maker and the rich smell of ground roasted beans drifted tantalisingly in the air, Mitch remembered the journal in the rucksack.
He went back into the hallway and unzipped the rucksack, taking out the journal from beneath his waterproof jacket. Returning to the kitchen, he flicked through the pages. The handwriting was spidery in places, bolder and more confident in others. The pencil sketches, interspersed among the writing, were of flowers, landscapes, and people.
Mitch stopped at a random page and read the first line. The words had been scrawled in spidery black ink.
Walked along the river to the place where the bluebells grow today. Their bloom has gone. Soon they will be nothing more than blue rot in the shadow of the weeping willow.
He turned to an earlier page.
In the woods near Edge House, the foxgloves blush pink, hiding their secret.
Beneath the words, a foxglove plant had been sketched on the page, drawn in pencil with a high degree of skill.
Mitch knew his father had been artistic. He remembered drawings of birds and landscapes in sketchbooks, made during his father’s rambles through the countryside. When he was little, Mitch would sometimes sit at the kitchen table and pore over the books. His father would point at the bird pictures and tell Mitch the name of the species. But as far as Mitch knew, the man had never been interested in plants. Mitch had an interest in flora, of course, it came with the job. But that was something he’d developed during his horticultural training, not something he’d inherited from his father.
The coffee maker gurgled and then beeped when the pot was full. Mitch put the journal down on the counter and got a mug from the cupboard, pondering over the journal and why it had been locked in a safe deposit box. Tilly had said Michael put the journal into the safe deposit box a couple of days before he died. When Mitch opened the box, the journal was the only thing in there, so had the safe deposit box been empty until then? Or had something been taken out at the same time the journal was put in?
He poured the coffee and added milk and sugar before taking the steaming mug and the journal into the living room. Sitting on the sofa and placing the journal on the coffee table in front of him, he ruffled through the pages until he found another drawing. This one was a portrait of a young woman with fair hair held back by a tartan Alice band. Mitch didn’t recognise the woman and there was no identifying name in the text on the page. The words beneath the sketch described a walk in the countryside and a visit to a patch of poppies in a field.
The description in the journal was vivid yet generic, detailing the way the grasses in the field swayed in the wind “like hypnotised women waiting for their master’s command” and the shape of a nearby fence as “damp with rainwater and
bowing like an arched back” but never mentioning actual place names.
Mitch closed the book. It seemed to be nothing more than the ramblings of his father’s mind. He remembered Battle’s words, that his father’s name had come up during the investigations into a number of disappearances. Maybe there was a clue in the journal. Maybe he should hand it over to the police to assist them in their investigation.
He found Battle’s business card in his pocket and read it. The card contained a mobile number as well as an office number. The mobile would probably be the best way to get hold of the detective on a Sunday evening. He rang it.
Battle answered after three rings. “DCI Battle.”
“Hi, it’s Mitch Walker. I was wondering if we could talk some more about what you told me regarding my father. I have something that you may be interested in.” He began to flip through the pages of the journal idly.
“Mr. Walker, it’s good to hear from you. I sent the fingerprint lads around to Edge House on Friday. They dusted the door and were hoping to get elimination prints from you and your daughter but you weren’t there. I sent two officers around today as well but you weren’t in then, either. I even rang you on the house phone. No joy.”
“I had to come home,” Mitch said. “We didn’t touch the back door anyway.”
“Well it isn’t just the door, sir. There’s the kitchen, the bannister, your father’s office. And the safe, of course. We need your permission to enter the house and dust everything. Also, I’d like the housekeeper to have a look around the house. She might know if anything has been stolen.”
“Of course. You have my permission. Do whatever you need to do.” Mitch leafed towards the back of the journal, past a sketch of a stone bridge spanning a river, low hills in the background.
“I’d still like a set of your prints, sir, as well. So if you could come into the station sometime, that would be very helpful. Now, you said you had something I’d be interested in?”
Mitch wasn’t listening. He’d turned to a page in the journal that caught his attention. He felt his heart pounding.
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