by Roz Watkins
‘Are you paying attention?’ Mum spoke rapidly. ‘I’ve had Pauline on the phone.’
‘Pauline whose name must never be spoken?’
‘As it turns out, I think she’s a decent woman. It’s not her fault about your father. I should never have blamed her.’
‘You know they’ve split up now. Whatever she’s said to you – it might not be true.’
‘He’s broke, Meg. He lost all his money gambling.’
Everything went white and silent, except for a roaring in my ears. Mum must have still been talking but I couldn’t hear her. I pulled into a side road and slammed the car to a stop.
My brain was splintering into fragments, but my hearing had come back.
‘Stupid man,’ Mum was saying. ‘He always thought he was so damn clever. Thought he could beat the odds. Well, it turned out he couldn’t. Pauline’s been supporting him for years, while he kept promising to give it up. She finally decided she’d had enough. So he’s come to try and scrounge off us. Your gran’s money.’
I swallowed a gob of phlegm that was forcing its way up my throat. How pathetic I was. How gullible, how desperate to believe he cared about me, that he was proud of me. The bright flash of insight about myself was making me physically ill.
‘The charity …’ I croaked.
‘All made up. It was for him. Has he given you a load of rubbish about that, Meg? Please don’t tell me you gave him money. Not your gran’s money.’
‘No, Mum, I won’t give him anything. Look, I have to go – I’m taking Hamlet to Hannah’s.’
I indicated and pulled out in front of an Audi which was clearly speeding because it hadn’t been there a second ago. The driver’s face shone red in my mirror, inflamed with rage. He beeped his horn and swore. I gave him the finger, past caring if I was the star of his latest dash-cam video, and headed for home.
I juddered the car to a halt on the cobbles outside my house. Dad’s old VW had gone. I should have known he was skint from the geriatric nature of his car. He’d always liked his cars.
It was too hot to leave Hamlet, so I grabbed his carrier and headed into the house at a swift, furious lollop. I plonked him in the hallway, and he gave me an outraged look.
The house was silent, a slight smell of toast and a few crumbs on the table the only evidence Dad had ever been there. His bag and wallet were gone. The cheque I’d given him last night, that he’d shoved under a mug on the windowsill, was gone. He must have been halfway to the bank by now.
I charged up to the spare room. Dad’s suitcase was on the floor, no doubt with all his stuff neatly packed so he could leave as soon as my cheque cleared. I grabbed it and hurled it at the wall. ‘You fucking bastard!’ A tower of books came crashing down. I kicked the suitcase.
I opened the window. It was only a small, leaded one and Dad’s suitcase wouldn’t fit through it. I ripped the case open, grabbed his clothes and hurled them out. They fell like dead things onto the tiny garden area outside the front of the house. I went into the bathroom, grabbed his toothbrush, and chucked that out of the window too.
I crashed down the stairs and sat on one of the kitchen chairs, panting. I flipped open my laptop, logged into my bank account and cancelled the cheque. Then deadlocked the front door and put the chain on, and let myself and Hamlet out of the back. Dad wouldn’t be coming into my house ever again.
Mum’s car was parked in the wide road outside Hannah’s.
I grabbed Hamlet’s carrier, which felt heavier each time I picked it up, and staggered up the ramp to Hannah’s front door. It was flung open as I arrived. Mum.
‘Oh, love,’ she said.
I put Hamlet’s case down and she folded me into a hug. I stood for a moment in her arms, then pulled away, shut the door, and released Hamlet from his carrier.
‘Come to the kitchen,’ Mum said.
A mug of tea was already on the table for me. Hannah sat by the window. I went over and gave her a rough hug, then sat at the table with Mum.
Hamlet came trundling through and jumped onto Hannah’s knee. ‘Aw, he’s such a sweetie,’ she said, as he disgorged hair onto her black trousers. She looked up at me. ‘Are you okay? Your mum told me about your dad. She wanted to see you.’
I wiped my eyes, determined not to be upset any more. He wasn’t worth it. ‘Yes, he got me,’ I said. ‘How can he be such a fucker?’
‘Did he ask you for money?’ Mum said gently.
I nodded. ‘For his made-up charity. Last night when I was vulnerable. Someone tried to hurt Hamlet.’
Hannah leaned forward and rubbed under Hamlet’s chin. ‘Who would hurt little Hammy?’
‘Well, I must admit I was tempted on the way over. He’s practically shattered my eardrums. But anyway, no, it’s those deranged Justice for Violet bastards. They loathe me. It’s such a mess. And I need to get to work.’
‘You can take time for a cup of tea,’ Mum said. ‘You’ve had a lot to cope with.’
‘I think it’s upset me more than I realised,’ I said. ‘They’ve been posting all this stuff about me. Saying I was promoted too fast because I’m a woman. Saying I’m incompetent and corrupt and don’t want to catch Violet’s killer because I’m a vegetarian.’
‘What a load of nonsense!’ Mum snapped.
‘I know it’s nonsense,’ I said. ‘But it’s … horrible. It feels like a bunch of strangers have walked up to me on the street and kicked me in the face. I try not to take any notice, but … And now this with Dad. Maybe I was blind to him because I had so much else going on, and I so wanted him to be a good person.’
‘Yes, he caught you when you were vulnerable because of all this Violet stuff,’ Hannah said. ‘You needed to believe that he really cared about you.’
‘What kind of a person does that to his own daughter?’ I said.
Mum reached forward and put her hand over mine. ‘I know you like to think the best of him, but your memories aren’t right, Meg. He was always manipulative and controlling. We would have split up sooner if Carrie hadn’t fallen ill.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘I thought it was Carrie’s illness that split you up.’
Mum shook her head sadly. ‘No, if anything it kept us together.’
I took my hand away, not sure what to make of that. Had I been fooling myself all these years about what Dad was really like? Wrongly excusing his behaviour because of Carrie’s illness? ‘I can’t believe he used Carrie to try and get money from me,’ I said. ‘Talking about how guilty we felt and how we should try to help others who felt the same way.’
‘That is seriously shitty,’ Hannah said.
I gulped the last of my tea. ‘I have to go. This murder … I’m already on a knife-edge. I’m not letting him screw up my career too.’
42
I scanned the incident room. Everyone looked shattered. Hair was unwashed, clothes unironed, eyes bloodshot. My team were starting to resemble me. The desperation for a positive development was sucking the life from us. I realised I’d brought a mug of tea in with me and it still had an economy teabag and a spoon in it. I gave it a squish to try and extract some small amount of tea-taste.
‘Are you all right?’ Jai said. ‘You look terrible.’
‘Thank you, Jai. Very motivational.’ I fished out the teabag and threw it at the bin. The fact that it went in felt like my biggest achievement for quite some time. ‘Justice for Violet tried to get Hamlet last night.’ I didn’t mention that I’d also had to chuck my dad out of my house. I’d tell Jai and Fiona later when an entire murder investigation team wasn’t looking at me. I felt a stab of guilt and pity for my dad, before reminding myself what Mum had said. I put my mug down and picked at a broken nail on my thumb, almost relishing the fact that it was going to really hurt any minute.
‘Oh no!’ Fiona said. ‘Is Hamlet okay?’
‘He’s fine.’ I was aware of a buzz of interest from the room.
‘And is the perp still alive or have you captured, tortured and killed
him?’ Jai said.
‘Believe me, if I’d caught the bastard, he’d have wished he was dead. I smacked him and he ran away. I got some of his skin under my nails. It’s with the lab. But anyway, we need to talk about the case. Where are we at?’
‘We’ve not managed to locate Daniel Twigg,’ Jai said. ‘On the plus side, Justice for Violet took a night off from killing animals to stampede around the countryside hunting Daniel.’
My judgement was so far off I was like an inverse lie-detector. I’d trusted Dad, and I’d thought Daniel was a good person. How pathetically wrong could one woman be? ‘I shudder to think what they’ll do if they find him,’ I said.
‘It’s a bit alarming,’ Jai said. ‘With the weather and the rival gangs in balaclavas and meat suits, it all feels quite post-apocalyptic.’
I knew what Jai meant. Everything was getting out of hand. Civilisation felt more precarious than it ever had in my lifetime. As if it could suddenly fall apart and we’d be killing the aristocracy, looting, plundering, and eating rats.
‘For God’s sake,’ Craig said. ‘Are we going to discuss the case?’
‘Sorry, Craig,’ Jai said. ‘I used a grown-up word.’
‘Some of us have been doing our job,’ Craig said. ‘I’ve found out Gary had a lot of enemies. Owed a lot of people money. Pissed a lot of people off. We’re going through it all. But if Daniel killed Violet, he’s the obvious suspect.’
‘It could be a copy-cat killing,’ Fiona said. ‘They put the pig’s head on to make it look like it was connected to Violet.’
‘We’re waiting on analysis of the fibres and the hair we found on him,’ Craig said.
‘And in relation to Violet,’ Jai said. ‘We know Daniel’s razor was in the bin liner with Violet’s clothes, Violet’s blood was on Daniel’s overalls, he has keys to the abattoir, and he had no alibi.’
‘Yes, Jai, but do we have any actual evidence?’ I said.
Jai shot me a look.
‘I know, I know, I’m kidding. The evidence currently leads to Daniel having killed Violet.’ I hoped they’d put the tremor in my voice down to lack of sleep, and not shame at what a fool I’d been.
Jai fiddled with his tablet. ‘It also turns out that Donna was right. Gwen Twigg is Daniel’s mother. She moved away from Gritton but told a friend she knew a secret about Daniel. We don’t know if it’s the same secret that Gary told Violet shortly before they were both killed – the secret about the Pale Child. Anyway, we’re bringing her in. But look what we found inside Daniel’s caravan.’ Onto a screen behind us came photographs of what had been discovered in the secret half of the caravan. The half Daniel hadn’t wanted me to look at, just before I got doused in blood. The internal walls were plastered with pictures and newspaper articles.
About the Pale Child.
The headlines jumped out at me. Pale Child claims another victim. Pale Child returns to village. Just a toddler when the Pale Child came for him. The images were artists’ representations. Girls in white dresses running away through the trees, or over the rocks. Except one, which looked like a Victorian photograph. I peered more closely at it. A girl of about seven, leaning back on a chair, her eyes closed.
‘Is that the original girl who died?’ I asked.
‘We think so,’ Fiona said.
‘She doesn’t look very lively.’
‘I think it’s a post-mortem photograph,’ Fiona said. ‘Taken after she was strangled.’
‘Jesus Christ.’ I stepped back from the photograph. I’d heard about the Victorians doing this, but it was unsettling to see the real girl. The original Pale Child. Dead. And to think that Daniel had chosen to put her on his wall, in the area where he slept.
‘There’s another weird thing,’ Fiona said. ‘We found DNA on that doll’s face mask you rescued from the cliff, and there’s a familial relationship with Violet.’
‘What? The girl I saw dressed as the Pale Child is related to Violet? How closely?’
‘Not as close as a sibling or parent. But almost certainly a relation.’
‘As was the original Pale Child,’ I said.
I had a flash of memory. Blood flying at me. The words Daniel had spoken about his younger brother.
‘Maybe that’s why he started telling me about his brother falling down the spillway,’ I said. ‘Because I insisted on going into his caravan, and he realised I was going to see this. Maybe he was trying to explain.’
‘Daniel was obsessed with the Pale Child because of his brother?’ Jai said.
Craig cleared his throat. ‘He could have killed his brother as well. That could be the secret. Why Gwen Twigg never comes to Gritton and never sees her only son. She can’t stand to see him because he killed his little brother.’
The energy in the room rose. The team thought we had our man.
‘He may use the Pale Child as an excuse,’ Jai said. ‘A way to feel that the killing isn’t his fault. The Pale Child saw them and then they died. A way for him to reconcile his image of himself with being a killer.’
This was running away from me. ‘I don’t see his personality like that,’ I said. I’d been wrong, but surely not that wrong? They were making him sound like a serial killer.
Craig let out a soft snort. ‘Your poncy psychology degree letting you down this time?’
I pictured myself picking up my laptop and smashing it on his head. I settled for saying, ‘If you can’t contribute positively, please keep your mouth shut.’
Fiona said, ‘All this doesn’t make him the killer. He might just feel guilty about his brother’s death and about Lucas, the boy who died in the car crash, and has become obsessed with the Pale Child because they both supposedly saw her before they died.’
Craig sighed. ‘No, the pictures of the Pale Child don’t prove Daniel Twigg’s the killer. But luckily, we have a shitload of forensic evidence that does, plus the fact that he’s buggered off. It couldn’t be much clearer. And more than likely he killed Gary too. So now we need to find the bastard before anyone else dies.’
‘It does fit the facts,’ Jai said. ‘Are we warning the public?’
‘We are indeed,’ I said. ‘We have a huge operation looking for him and a press release going out shortly.’
I took another look at the photographs of the caravan’s interior. ‘What’s that one?’ It looked like a map. Gritton woods? A spot was marked with an ‘x’ and there was a tiny image of a gravestone. On it were the words, ‘1999 RIP’.
‘Another murder?’ Jai said. ‘That’s clearly a grave.’
‘Bex was raped in 1999,’ I said. ‘And Lucas died in a car crash that same night. Maybe it’s about him.’
‘But why show a gravestone in the woods?’ Fiona said. ‘Lucas wouldn’t have been buried in the woods.’
‘We’ll investigate,’ I said. ‘But the map’s pretty imprecise. We can’t justify the resources to dig up the whole of the woods.’
I didn’t want to be hunting Daniel. To be talking about whether he’d killed his own brother as well as Violet, and Gary, and possibly even someone buried in the woods as well. He was the first person I’d felt anything for in years, if I discounted my completely inappropriate and thoroughly suppressed feelings for Jai. Everyone sometimes got people wrong. We could all be misled. In fact it always made me laugh watching the TV shows with the ‘genius’ detectives who could supposedly spot a killer at ten paces. You gave me a funny look or blinked in a weird way, so you’re clearly a murdering psychopath who slaughtered your entire family, including the dog. Nobody could reliably identify a killer, and we had to follow the evidence. But that didn’t stop me feeling utterly dejected about my appalling judgement.
Daniel’s mother, Gwen, sat very still while Fiona sorted out the tape and took her through the formalities. She had a thick sweep of long grey hair and eyes that had the same faraway look as her son’s.
‘He didn’t do those things, you know.’ She spoke slowly as if checking each word as it came out. ‘I’m
sure all mothers say the same, but he isn’t a killer. He just gets a bit … over-focused.’
‘Do you have any idea where he might be, Gwen?’ I asked.
She shook her head.
‘Any special place he might go? Any idea at all, no matter how unlikely.’
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t seen him for so long.’
‘What happens when he gets over-focused?’ Fiona asked.
Gwen looked down. ‘Nothing bad happens. Nothing bad happens when Daniel gets over-focused.’ Her voice had an almost hypnotic tone, as if she was repeating a mantra. It made me nervous.
‘Any places he used to go as a child?’ I said.
‘No. I don’t know. I just keep praying I didn’t put that Violet girl in harm’s way.’
Fiona said, ‘How would you have done that?’
‘She called me. The girl Violet. She found out that I lived in the village in 1999. She asked me if I knew who Rebecca Smith was. I told her that would be Tony Nightingale’s daughter.’
So that solved one mystery. Gwen had put Violet on to Tony Nightingale.
‘The poor girl,’ Gwen said. ‘I pray for her every day.’
‘When did you last see Daniel?’ Fiona asked.
Gwen blinked a couple of times. ‘Many years ago. I can’t visit Gritton.’
‘Why not?’
‘Terrible things happen in Gritton. My little boy. Nothing was ever the same after my little boy … After Charlie died.’
Fiona waited a moment and said, ‘Charlie fell down the spillway in the reservoir?’
Gwen was quiet and I didn’t think she was going to answer. Then she spat the words out, fast and shocking compared to her previous calmness. ‘She killed him!’
‘Who killed him?’ I asked. Fiona and I sat very still, all our attention on Gwen.
‘The Pale Child.’
Fiona shot me a look. I felt my spirits sinking with the realisation that Gwen wasn’t quite all there. Maybe it was the years of alcohol abuse, but her relationship with reality seemed non-exclusive.
‘Who is the Pale Child?’ I asked.
‘Nobody knows who she is, but she was there that other terrible night too. When Lucas died. I told Daniel not to associate with those Nightingales. I didn’t want him to get fixated. I know what he can be like. Those girls were so pretty. Violet’s the same.’