by P. R. Black
Just as she began to acclimatise to the forest and its perpetual furtive movement, she saw something duck down, just over her shoulder.
Nothing. There was a natural aperture in some brambles, set behind the treeline. A branch had moved in the background of this space, perhaps; her imagination and her nerves did the rest.
When she discerned another movement, from roughly the same position, a little further up the slope, just where the path began to flatten out towards the clearing, Becky stopped doubting herself. She turned round, bent down to tie her shoelaces, and stared into the undergrowth.
Again, nothing. No sprung branches. No disturbed birds. No quick-darting deer, no dextrous squirrels. She stood up, popped a stick of chewing gum in her mouth, unzipped her waterproof jacket, turned, and darted up the path. At the last moment, before the brow of the hill was reached, she angled into the treeline, and squeezed between two elms.
Becky crouched low, behind a huge tree whose girth was easily greater than her own, taking care not to crush a crop of nut-brown mushrooms whose fingers poked through the moss at her heel.
Something tore through the trees down the slope, following her passage. The trees obscured the details, but there was no doubt it was a person.
The footsteps slowed. Someone was breathing heavily. They took a step or two forward, then stopped. The unmistakeable sound of a smartphone screen being tapped followed; then came a low curse, somewhere between the level of a gasp and a sigh.
The intruder was close, just to the right, out of view. Becky allowed her mind to clear, listening to the footsteps approach.
There was that same feeling of something lingering just out of vision, a maddening foreign body, just as a shadow fell across the moss, to the right of the tree.
Carefully, a figure stepped into the light. Then Becky pounced.
20
The figure was that of a short, slight woman in her early twenties. She was dressed in a black hoodie, but she was no one’s idea of a mugger, far less a killer.
Nonetheless, Becky was fully committed.
The girl’s large green eyes flared as Becky gripped her shoulder, pivoted hard with one foot planted on the forest floor and hurled her to the deck.
It was a rough landing for the girl. Laid flat out on her back, her hood slipped off her head as she got onto her elbows, blinking, utterly astonished. She wasn’t out of shape but was certainly out of breath, the armpits of her top dense with sweat. She rolled over and lurched to her feet.
‘What in god’s name are you doing?’ the girl asked, in English, with a Liverpudlian accent.
Becky remained poised, ready to strike, bouncing on her feet. ‘I’ll ask the fucking questions. Why were you scurrying around after me? You following me?’
‘I was just minding my own business, you crazy bitch! What are you talking about?’ The girl stooped to pick up something she’d dropped; a Nikon with a long lens. ‘This better not be broken!’
‘Take one picture of me and I’ll break it, and then your neck.’
‘You’re tapped, love. Mental.’ The girl backed off but did not raise the camera.
Becky relaxed and narrowed her eyes, taking in the pale features, the heavy eyebrows. The girl’s eyes were wider than they had seemed in the photo byline, but there was no mistaking those eyebrows.
‘Your name wouldn’t be Rosie Banning, would it?’
‘None of your business.’ The girl slung her camera strap round her neck and made for the gap in the trees.
‘I think it is my business, if you’re going to splatter my name all over the front of a paper. Hey – I’m talking to you!’
I’m talking to you. How easily the language sprung forth. How the bullies spoke; how they made you stop what you were doing, pull you up short, snagging the breath in your throat, triggering that awful fear. Becky felt a tug of shame as the girl paused. She brushed dirt off the side of her leg where she’d landed. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ she said, querulously. ‘That’s as far as you go. You’ll be lucky I don’t report you for assault.’
‘Where did the interview come from? The one you put on the front page. We’ve never spoken before.’
‘We have. You were just too drunk to remember.’
‘When?’ The red drink. The cocktail. Blood red. Becky remembered that about the evening in question, if not much else; some triangulation was possible, calculated from the work clothes she’d ruined by spilling the stuff. She’d drooled some of the stuff, deliberately, allowing it to spill down her chin. Look at me. I’m a vampire.
‘Bar Skeelo?’ Rosie Banning smiled. ‘I’m not surprised you don’t remember. You were blazing drunk. You could still talk, though. You talked a lot.’
She grinned – a silly, schoolgirl sort of grin, which triggered something unpleasant in Becky. She strode forward, but before she got there, Rosie Banning reached into her hooded top. Something sleek and silvery glinted in her hand: pepper spray. Irony of ironies, if she blasted her with that.
It was a canister of some kind, with a nozzle attached to the top.
But instead of triggering noxious vapours, the silvery object emitted a terrific noise. Rosie Banning stood fast, defiant.
‘What the Christ is that?’ Becky yelled, not quite above the clamour.
Her chin upthrust, the girl continued to press down on the canister, and it blared on, startling every living creature in the vicinity. A fox tore out of the undergrowth and sped away.
‘What?’ Rosie mouthed, suddenly realising Becky had spoken.
‘I said… what in the Christ is that?’
Rosie Banning let go of the trigger. The whole world seemed to whine with the sudden absence of the sound.
‘Attack alarm,’ Rosie said, diffidently.
‘And it’s meant to stop people attacking you?’
Rosie shrugged. ‘It works on dogs.’
Becky snorted. Then laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘I’ve got me an idea. How would you fancy another scoop? This one’s on the record, and we don’t have to go drinking.’
*
Rosie took lots of photos, from every angle. The light was good at this time of day; the trees formed a natural crucible round the grassy clearing.
‘I don’t know how you can stand to be here,’ the girl said. ‘Honestly. I don’t even want to be here, and it’s the middle of the day. This is it? This is the place?’
‘Yeah. This is where most of it happened.’ Becky pointed towards the rocks embedded near the back of the clearing.
‘What are those? Standing stones? Like Stonehenge?’
‘They’re not sure. The rocks had to get here somehow, they’re not native to the geology of this place. And they don’t form any kind of pattern you see on these type of stones – they don’t align with the sun or the moon. No one can be sure. It is a natural arena, though. There was a lot of druidic activity here.’
‘Druids?’
‘Yeah. You ever read Asterix?’
‘Who’s he, a philosopher?’
‘Yeah. Modern-day. I believe he played football for Nantes, too.’
Rosie continued snapping. ‘I guess you did your research.’
‘Always.’ Becky bit the side of her mouth.
They approached a lump of rock, slanted down one side, bleached in the sun. Things had been scored into the surface of the rock – love-hearts mainly, true labours of love. Time and the elements had smoothed them over, an effect Becky recognised from tombstones in the churchyard at Whitby, edifices sanded off by the elements.
‘Was it here, that…?’
‘This is where they died, yes.’
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’
‘Let’s do it quickly.’ Becky had taken to the girl, despite herself – she had pluck, but also a basic sweetness in her broad, honest face. In another life, they might have gone drinking. In fact, in another life they had gone drinking.
But Becky had to be firm. ‘I’
m happy to speak to you, and I’m well aware you’re going to publish regardless. Here’s your first and only warning: get it right. Don’t misquote me. Don’t fill in the gaps, like you clearly did in your big splash. Assume I’m recording all this.’
Rosie blanched. ‘Are you recording this?’
‘Assume I am, I said.’
‘Okay then. I’ll start with the big question. Why are you here, exactly?’
Becky shrugged. ‘I’m marking the anniversary. Wouldn’t you? It’s my family.’
‘Don’t you ever wonder if… he might be here? Right now?’
‘It’s crossed my mind. He’s somewhere, isn’t he?’
‘Does that worry you?’
‘Think back a few minutes. Do I seem especially worried?’
Rosie shifted her stance, taking a wider shot of the trees. ‘I’d say you’re quite handy. Do you know self-defence? Karate? Kung Fu?’
‘One or two different disciplines, but I’m no master. I’ve studied Krav Maga, but I’m a bit rusty.’
‘Not so you’d notice,’ Rosie said, sullenly.
‘I competed as a kid, but my training was long ago.’
‘What belt?’
‘Blue.’ Becky smiled. ‘Or maybe black. One or the other.’
‘You aiming to kick his ass?’
Becky shook her head. ‘I never, ever want to encounter him again, until I read about him being put behind bars.’
Rosie’s smile slipped out from behind the camera. ‘You know something? I’m not sure I believe you.’
‘I don’t care what you believe. That’s what you put down in the paper. Understand?’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘I mean it.’ Becky’s face hardened.
‘I’ll need a photo. The main image.’
Becky trailed her fingers along the pitted surface of the slanting stone. The place of sacrifice. ‘This is the best spot, I suppose. I think, for a front page image, I—’
She was interrupted by a click, and looked up, startled.
‘I’ve just taken it,’ Rosie said.
‘Okay. Just make sure I don’t look too chinny, though, will you?’
She smiled. ‘I’ll do my best. I think it’s your best side.’
Becky surveyed the stones, the unruly lawn in the centre of the circle. It felt a little like seeing your old primary school for the first time in years, she thought. Everything seemed a little bit smaller but was utterly saturated in memories.
‘I have to ask,’ said Rosie, ‘what’s going on in your head?’
‘Ah… all sorts of things. I’m seeing it happen, really. I’ll never forget it happening, much as I want to.’
‘You seem calm. I think I’d be on the ground by now, if I was you. I don’t think I’d want to get back up.’
Becky’s lower lip quivered. It was a flash flood, sometimes; out of nowhere the dam could burst. She might be on the floor, indeed. She bit her lip and turned her head away for a moment. ‘You never quite get over it. It’s like any kind of grief. You learn to live with it. You scar over.’
‘There’s grief, and there’s what happened to you,’ Rosie said quietly.
‘I’ve learned to cope. It takes time. As long as it needs to. I’ve suffered, I won’t kid anyone on. PTSD, anxiety disorder, panic attacks….’ She swallowed. ‘And problem drinking. You name it, I’ve had it. I needed counselling, therapy. I wasn’t right for years. More than a decade. Sometimes I still don’t think I’ve got to grips with it. I was lucky – someone spotted I was struggling at university. They set me on the right path.’
‘Are you sure it’s a good thing that you’ve come here?’ Rosie said, abruptly. ‘We can go if you want. Just get out of here.’
Becky shook her head. ‘No. This is necessary. You have to face what frightens you, sometimes. I’ll take you through it.’
Rosie held up a digital recorder. ‘Take your time. Anything you don’t want to discuss, or strike from the record…’
‘It’s fine.’ Becky looked Rosie in the eye. ‘He used Howie to coerce us. Held a knife to his throat… said he was going to kill him unless we did what he wanted.’
Rosie said nothing.
‘So of course, we did what he wanted. Except my dad. My dad fought. He was clever. He waited until he had a chance. One hand free. For a second or two, I thought he was going to win. But he didn’t. He had his legs broken. He still fought. My dad was a brave man. The bravest man.’
Becky and Rosie stood stock still. A breeze stirred the grass.
‘From there, he made Clara cut herself. He told her to slice her own face, and she did it. Then he told her that she wasn’t doing it right. At one stage, all I could see was her eyes. But she did it. You would. Anyone would. But he made her do it.’
‘Jesus,’ Rosie whispered.
‘Then he took her away into the bushes. We heard her scream. By then he’d already tied the rest of us up.’
Becky saw tears pooling in Rosie’s eyes.
‘Then he killed Howie. In front of us. That was the worst, that…’ Tears spilled down Becky’s face, and she sobbed. ‘He didn’t suffer long. I can say that for him, if nothing else.’
‘No more, Becky. You don’t need to tell people this.’
‘I do. Maybe I kept quiet too long. Maybe that’s a big part of my problem.’ She took a breath. ‘So he killed Howie and we lost hope. Then he untied me and gave me this.’ Becky turned and pulled her collar away from her neck. ‘See that scar, there? You can see the start of it. It extends from the meat of my shoulder down to my hip on the other side. They call it a flesh wound. No nerve damage. He did it deliberately. Slowly. He wanted to see my reaction, and my parents’. They were watching their last child being tortured, and worse. But my mother thought on her feet. She tried to coerce him, to distract him. Again, he made it look like it could work, that she might get a chance to… I don’t know. Get away. Take the knife off him. But it didn’t work, and he killed her too. I think they mentioned in the news reports that my mother was suffocated, and she was. It’s just that he… he sat on her head. He pushed her face down in the mud. That’s how she died.’
‘You got away, Becky,’ Rosie said, thickly. ‘You made it. It was a miracle.’
‘No miracle. I got lucky. He stumbled. Before she died my mother told me to run. He left me untied, when he… when my father died. So I did run. He thought I was frozen to the spot. And I was… until I wasn’t. Something snapped, and I ran. It took him by surprise. He fell, and that bought me some time, to run into the trees. I hid. I had to lie in the bushes, hardly daring to breathe. Covered in bugs and spiders. I couldn’t make a sound. I got away. I ran into someone in the forest, found someone, and they saved me. The killer had got away.’
‘Your dad… your dad didn’t die like the others?’
‘No,’ Becky said, sharply. ‘No, he died quickly. If you take away the fact his legs got broken.’
‘Jesus, Becky. What can I say? What can anyone say?’
‘Nothing. Just write it all down. Put it out there.’ She wiped away a tear and rummaged in her bag for a tissue.
*
The nearest place to grab a coffee and a slice of cake was several miles back down the road. In Britain this might have been a truck stop, a concrete box dumped in the earth distributing bacon rolls and tea thick as trench mud to truckers. In ancient days, it could have been a Little Chef. The truckers were still here, of course, a preponderance of beefy men in plaid shirts, and some of them were British. But the coffee was first-rate, the floors and tables spotless, and barring the odd glance or two, the clientele mostly respectful of the two women.
Becky studied each and every one of them, her back against the far wall. Their height, their limbs; she didn’t pay too much attention to the extra weight clinging to their chins and inflating their waistlines – behind every wheezing fifty-year-old grizzly lurked the frame of a whiplash-thin young buck, after all.
Meanwhile, Rosie Banning
polished off the last of her pastry with a beautiful, unashamed gusto. Becky wondered how young she was; no older than 25, surely.
‘There are theories, about what happened,’ Rosie said, wiping her mouth with a napkin, ‘if you’d like to hear them.’
‘Go on.’
‘First – the Crandley theory.’
Becky shook her head. ‘Debunked, a long time ago.’
‘Hold on, hear me out. Miles Crandley wasn’t a DNA match, but his psychological profile was a close fit. And he did own property in Provence.’
‘It’s not just the DNA evidence which ruled him out – but the fact that he wasn’t in the country when my family were killed. He was in the UK. Miles Crandley was a rapist, a murderer and a psychopath. But he didn’t kill my family.’
‘But we know that he had a business associate who sometimes used Crandley’s account to stay in hotels, and signed in some places under Crandley’s name. This other guy’s now dead, so we can’t know for sure. But it’s possible Crandley was still in France at the time.’
‘The MO doesn’t fit. He didn’t use a mask. He didn’t tackle whole families, just single career women. He didn’t draw out their suffering, either. It’s too much of a leap. The patterns don’t match.’
‘Hold on a minute. You say he didn’t use a mask – but he did. A girl who survived one of Crandley’s early attacks said he used a ski mask or a balaclava. Not as theatrical or as horrid as the one the killer used in your case, but he might have graduated to using that. Crandley’s other victims aren’t around to tell you one way or the other. Then there’s the… well. The manner of death, for one. At least, in Clara’s case.’ Her voice tailed off, and her cheeks coloured. ‘Sorry.’