Dark Peak

by Adam J. Wright

  “Hello, Mitch,” Silas said.

  “Silas. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, under the circumstances. Although I have to tell you, it doesn’t feel good to know that my son is disappointed in me because I’m not a serial killer.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that,” Mitch said.

  Silas sighed. “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you to come here.”

  Mitch nodded but said nothing.

  “I’ve had some time to think,” Silas said. “I’m going to tell you something but I want your word that you won’t tell anyone else. Not the police, not my lawyer, not anyone. Understand?”

  “I don’t know,” Mitch said. “Are you going to confess to a crime or something?”

  “No, it’s about Sarah.”

  Mitch sat up. “Sarah?”

  “Do I have your word?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Silas leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “I haven’t been honest with you. The version of events I told you at my house wasn’t the entire truth. It’s the version I’ve told the police and everyone else but I’m going to tell you what really happened. If you want to hear it.”

  “Of course I do.”

  Silas looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. Mitch looked too. The other prisoners were too focused on their own visitors to listen to anyone else’s conversation.

  “You remember I told you that Olivia was being abused?”

  “Yes,” Mitch said. “Are you saying that isn’t true?”

  “No, that’s true. Let me tell this in my own way, lad.”

  “Sorry, go on.”

  “She was being abused,” Silas said, “and Alice was aware of it and she kept saying that Olivia would be better off if she met the same end as the Hatton sisters. I told you all that. What I didn’t tell you was that Olivia came to me one day and told me she was going to run away.”

  “Okay,” Mitch said.

  “I knew how bad she was getting it and I also suspected that Alice was planning to be Olivia’s angel of mercy, so I helped my sister plan her escape route. She wasn’t abducted, Mitch. She ran. That’s why I made sure I was in The Mermaid that night with my dad and Alice. I didn’t want the police sniffing around in my family’s business so I made sure we had a cast-iron alibi.”

  “Are you saying she’s alive?” Mitch asked.

  “Sshh, keep it down.” Silas looked over his shoulder again. Satisfied, he said in a low voice, “Yes, she’s still alive. She’s in Scotland. She left her jacket at Blackden Edge so it would look like the killer everyone was talking about had taken her. It was also her way of sticking a middle finger up at Alice, I assume. Alice would know the killer hadn’t taken Olivia at all, since she was the killer. ”

  A verse from the journal came unbidden into Mitch’s head, the verse referring to Olivia.

  Don’t look in the woods or in the glade

  The pimpernel’s not there

  “Well, I’m glad she’s not dead,” he said. He wasn’t sure what else to say.

  “There’s more,” Silas said. “Olivia and I kept in touch via letters. I kept a PO box in Matlock that no one else knew about. We contacted each other very rarely but in 1987, I wrote her and told her that her niece needed her.”

  “Her niece,” Mitch said. “Sarah.”

  Silas nodded. “Sarah was in the same situation Olivia had been in twelve years before. I told her that if Sarah didn’t escape the family soon, she was going to end up like those Hatton girls.”

  Mitch felt his throat tightening. He knew where this was leading and he could hardly fathom that he’d believed something for thirty years that was untrue.

  “Olivia didn’t want to come back to Derbyshire,” Silas said. “But she knew she was Sarah’s only hope. So she came back and watched Edge House, waiting for an opportunity. She planned to break in through the back gate but, apparently, you and Sarah went wandering over the moors. Olivia saw her chance and saved Sarah’s life.”

  “She abducted her,” Mitch said. “She’s the one who hit me on the back of the head and took Sarah.” The import of this information hit him like a blow to his gut. “Is Sarah still alive?”

  Silas nodded slowly. “She and Olivia live together.”

  “In Scotland.”

  “Yes, in Scotland.”

  “Where exactly?”

  “If I tell you, you’re going to go there.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “Then I want you to take a message for me. Tell Olivia what has happened, tell her Alice is locked away and won’t be getting out. With Frank and Michael gone and Alice out of the picture, Olivia and Sarah will finally be free of their past.”

  “Give me the address,” Mitch said. He was still trying to process the information he’d just been given. His sister was still alive. Leigh had an aunt she’d never met. He had to see Sarah as soon as possible.

  “Fell Cottage,” Silas said. “On the shore of Loch Rannoch.”

  Mitch pushed his chair back and stood up. “Take care,” he told Silas.

  “You too, lad. You too.”

  37

  Lost and Found

  It was a bright afternoon and the sun shimmered off the surface of Loch Rannoch. Mitch drove the Jeep onto the short road that led to Fell Cottage. The place wasn’t known to his GPS so he’d had to get directions at the local garage.

  “Are we there yet?” Leigh asked from the passenger seat.

  Mitch spotted a cottage on the right-hand side of the road, a small, quaint white building with a thatched roof and a front garden full of flowers. A wooden sign next to the front door said FELL COTTAGE.

  “This is the place,” Mitch said. He parked the Jeep and turned to Leigh. “I want you to wait here while I knock on the door, okay? Olivia and Sarah haven’t seen anyone from the family for a long time and they might turn me away. So you wait here until I know they’re friendly.”

  “Okay,” Leigh said, pouting a little and sliding down in her seat.

  Mitch knew how she felt but he didn’t want her involved in any ugliness. “No matter how this turns out, we’ll go and get ice cream later, how does that sound? And the hotel we’re staying at is really nice and has a pool.”

  That seemed to cheer her up a little. She smiled and nodded. “I know, you already told me that.”

  “Well, I’m telling you again in case you forgot.”

  She raised an eyebrow and looked at him incredulously. “As if I’d forget that, Dad.”

  He grinned. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Taking a deep breath, he got out of the Jeep, went through the gate, and walked along the stone path that led to the door. Before he had a chance to knock, a woman opened the door. She was in her sixties and had grey hair cut in a simple bob style and eyes that reminded Mitch of Silas, her brother.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Olivia,” he said.

  She inspected his face closely. Her own face became grim. “I think you’d better leave,” she said and began to close the door.

  “Olivia, I have a message from Silas,” he said. The door halted. When she didn’t say anything else, Mitch continued. “Alice has been arrested. You don’t have anything to worry about anymore.”

  “You came all the way here to tell me that? Why can’t Silas write me?”

  “He’s in prison at the moment. I don’t think he wants anyone to know about you, including the prison guards who read his mail.”

  “Yet he told you where I am.”

  “I’m not my father,” he said. “I’m—”

  “I know who you are. The last time I saw you, you were lying in the snow. I apologise for that. Now, you can turn that car of yours around and go back to where you came from.” The door resumed its journey towards being closed.

  Mitch put his foot in the way. “I came to see Sarah, my sister.”

  “Oh, did you? And what makes you think she’d want to see you?”

  He frowned. “I’ve never don
e her any harm.”

  “Then don’t do her any now.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Sarah has a life here, free from the troubles of the past. She has nightmares every now and then, of course, but on the whole, she’s doing well. She’s got her own family. Do you think seeing you would do her good or do her harm?”

  “But I’m her brother. I love her.”

  “And Michael was her father, but that didn’t mean he had the girl’s best interests at heart. It took Sarah years before she trusted anyone when she came here. She’s taken some positive steps forward. Not leaps, steps. And now you arrive on my doorstep thinking you have the right to push her back down a road she doesn’t want to travel just because you’re her brother and you love her.”

  Mitch didn’t know what to say.

  “Just because you’ve gotten over the events of thirty years ago doesn’t mean everyone has,” Olivia said. “Some of us had to deal with a lot more than you did. You lost your sister, but think about what she lost every time…well, every time she was forced to do something she didn’t want to do.”

  “I told you, I’m not Michael.”

  “No, but you’re his son and Frank’s grandson. And in my experience, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “My dad is a nice man,” Leigh said from behind Mitch.

  He turned around. “Leigh, I told you to wait in the car.”

  Olivia bent forward slightly so her face was level with Leigh’s. “Hello, who might you be?”

  “I’m Leigh. Leigh Walker. This is my dad.” She pointed at Mitch.

  “I see,” Olivia said. “And you like living with your dad, do you?”

  “Well, I don’t live with him anymore but that isn’t his fault. That’s because my mum had an affair.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly, that Mitch wondered exactly how much she knew about her parent’s breakup. He and Jess had simply told her at the time that they couldn’t live together anymore.

  “I live with him at the weekends, though,” Leigh continued. “And he lets me do stuff my mum doesn’t, like stay up late sometimes and watch TV. And he makes my favourite food, which is spaghetti. He’s really nice and I’m sure you’d like him if you got to know him.”

  Olivia smiled. “Oh, would I? And I suppose you came all the way here to meet your aunt, is that right?”

  “If she wants to meet me,” Leigh said, nodding.

  Olivia straightened her back again and looked from Leigh to Mitch. “Sarah doesn’t live here anymore, she’s got a house with her husband and their son. She’s moved on as best she can. I suppose I can ring her and ask her if she wants to see you.”

  Mitch nodded. “That would be great, thank you.”

  Olivia pointed at the Jeep. “You go and wait in your car there and I’ll see if Sarah wants to see you or not. Whatever she says, whether yes or no, I will abide with her wishes.”

  “Okay,” Mitch said, giving Leigh a nudge back towards the Jeep. When they got to it and climbed in, he asked her, “What did you mean back there when you said your mum had had an affair? I never told you that.”

  She gave him the incredulous look again. “I know what’s going on, Dad, I’m twelve. I’m not a child anymore.”

  “Right,” he said, nodding with a straight face.

  The door of Fell Cottage opened again and Olivia came out. She beckoned them over. When they got to the front door, she said, “Sarah will see you. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing but I told you I’d abide by her wishes and I stick to my word.”

  “So where do we find her?” Mitch asked. “You said she doesn’t live her anymore.”

  “I told you she lives with her husband and son and that’s true. But they’ve gone fishing today so Sarah is here at the moment, visiting me.”

  “She’s here,” Mitch said.

  “I just said that, didn’t I?”

  “Hello, Mitch.” The voice came from the side of the house. Mitch looked over to see a woman with long chestnut hair standing by a tree of white dog rose flowers. She wore a yellow summer dress and sandals. Her face was thirty years older than when he’d last seen it but she was unmistakably Sarah.

  “Sarah,” he said, going to her and wrapping his arms around her. Her hair smelled of honeysuckle.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said. She broke the hug and turned her attention to Leigh. “And who’s this?”

  “I’m Leigh. You’re my aunt.”

  “Yes,” Sarah, said, nodding. “Yes, I am. Would you like to see the loch?”

  Leigh nodded.

  Sarah took her hand and led her around the side of the house to the back garden, which sloped down to the water.

  Mitch took a deep breath of flower-sweet air and looked at the distant high hills and the sun glittering on the water. It seemed that Sarah had found a good life here.

  He’d believed her to be dead for thirty years but the journal of a killer, locked in a vault by the very man who was responsible for Sarah’s flight from her old life, had opened the doors that had eventually led Mitch back to her.

  He walked down to the loch where Sarah and Leigh were talking by the water’s edge.

  It was time for the shattered pieces of their family to be reunited and form something good.

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