Holly shrugged. “It is what it is.”
She wriggled her legs away from him. She wasn’t used to having men she hardly knew sitting on the edge of her bed.
Apparently oblivious to her discomfort, Scott handed across one of the large cups.
“I brought you a cup of tea.” From the pocket of his coat, he produced a couple of little plastic pots of cream and six sachets of brown sugar. “I thought you might need it.”
Holly’s tension evaporated. She pried off the plastic lid and inhaled the steam.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” He watched her empty all the sugars and one of the creams into the brew. As usual, he’d left his coffee black and unsweetened. They sat sipping in companionable silence for a few moments.
Eventually, Holly said, “If I were a local cop turned serial killer, where would I hide?”
Scott sucked his bottom lip. “People would recognise him anywhere he went.”
“Only if he stayed in town.”
“So we’re wasting our time looking for him?”
“Not at all.” Holly scratched her inner forearm. She hadn’t been able to go outside for a cigarette since the previous evening, and the tea had sparked a fierce craving.
“But if he’s left town . . .”
“I don’t think he has.”
“What makes you say that?”
Holly shrugged. “Just a feeling.”
Scott put down his coffee. “I’m here to learn,” he said. “If there’s more to your theory than just a hunch, I’d appreciate you sharing.”
Holly looked down at her cup. She picked a scrap of fluff from the blanket covering her legs.
“Fair enough.” She drew herself up and stretched her shoulders. “First off, I don’t think he’s finished. Whatever he’s been trying to achieve with these killings, I don’t think he’s done it yet.”
“You think he’ll kill again? Why?”
“It’s the manner of death,” Holly said. “At first, I thought these killings might be retribution for the death of Lisa Hughes. Perkins finds her on the road, then goes after her boyfriend, then the lover of the man who impregnated her, and finally the mayor himself.”
“That makes sense to me.”
“But why mutilate the bodies in that way? Why copy a murder that happened when he was a very small boy?” She shook her head. “No, whatever’s going on here, it’s more than revenge for a hit-and-run. These people were killed for a purpose, and those exact injuries—the spikes in the eyes and the slit across the abdomen—are all part of it.”
“And then there’s the connection to the airbase, and your mother’s murder.”
“I hadn’t forgotten about that.”
Scott stood, and Holly eased herself to the edge of the bed. “Pass my crutch, would you?”
“Where are we going?”
“Downstairs.”
Slowly and uncomfortably, with one hand on the banister and the other on her crutch, she negotiated the steep wooden stairs. Scott tried to help, but she shook him off. She knew he meant well, but she was in too much pain to be manhandled.
By the time they reached the incident room, her jaw ached from being clenched, and she was relived to find the room empty. Apparently everyone else was out searching for Perkins.
Someone had left a chair in front of her whiteboard. She levered herself into it.
By now, the board was a mess of scribbled notes, with arrows connecting the various victims. The newest arrows had been left last night, before she retired to her room. These were thick black lines linking the three youngest victims and Perkins to the local school.
“Did we hear back from the school?”
Scott perched on the edge of the table beside her. “Yes, we sent one of the uniforms up there this morning. Their records confirm all four were in the same year, the same as their parents were.”
“What?”
“All their parents were in the same year at school.”
The hairs prickled on the back of Holly’s neck. Something fluttered in her chest. She couldn’t decide if she was excited, or on the verge of an anxiety attack.
“What about the mayor?”
“Davies?” Scott pulled out his phone. “I’ll check.”
Despite the tea, Holly’s mouth had gone dry. “And check my mother, too.”
Scott thought about it, and his eyes widened as the penny dropped. “Could that be the connection?”
Holly gave a shrug. She didn’t know. But the blood sang in her veins with the anticipation of finding a solution.
“The sooner you get on to the school,” she said, “the sooner we’ll find out.”
Her gaze lit on the photographs she’d been given in the pub. Her fingertips rearranged them on the tabletop. Those images from thirty years ago. Whatever was going on, that had been the moment it all started, with her mother and the experiment.
“Holy fuck,” she said.
Scott looked around. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I . . . I think I know where we’ll find Perkins.”
* * *
They left the car on the edge of the road and made their way on foot down the muddy track that led to the river. Holly’s crutch kept sinking into the soft ground, but each time she stumbled, Scott was there to catch her elbow.
The wind shook the trees. Echoing up the valley came the sound of surf striking the beach. Flecks of rain prefigured an oncoming deluge.
Eventually, they came to the place where Holly’s mother had died. A small bridge, little more than a mossy old railway sleeper, led them over the water where Holly had almost drowned to the stone circle sitting on its little boggy promontory.
As Holly had suspected, Constable Perkins stood waiting. His face looked pinched and pale, and his clothes were wet to the chest, as if he’d waded through the reddish waters to reach this spot. He had been standing to one side of the stones, apparently gazing downstream. But as they approached, he turned to face them. In his shivering hand, he carried a silver-plated carving knife.
“Go away,” he said.
Holly shook her head. “Sorry, pal. You know that’s not going to happen.”
The constable raised a bony finger. “You shouldn’t be here.”
The man’s soul flickered and squirmed behind his eyes as light and dark writhed against each other like eels in a tank. Holly had never seen anything like it. And yet, something about the darkness in his head called to her. Something about it felt almost familiar. . . .
21.
ALICE LEANT AGAINST THE TREE. The roughness of the bark pressed into her shoulders through the thin cotton of her summer dress, and she felt a delicious thrill as she sparked a cigarette. Her husband didn’t approve of her smoking. He didn’t approve of a lot of things she did. But then, tonight wasn’t about him. Tonight she wasn’t a wife or a mother. Tonight, no matter how queasy she might feel at the thought of abandoning her little family, she was simply Alice. And she had the whole of the rest of her life ahead of her.
As soon as Martin was done guarding whatever the boffins were doing in the woods, he’d come and find her and take her back to the base with him. And then tomorrow, they’d be on the early train to Birmingham. By the time her husband realised she wasn’t coming home, they’d be well on the way to Martin’s new posting in Kent. And once they had settled into the married quarters, they could send for little Holly. After all, she was their daughter. She’d been conceived in the back of an RAF Land Rover one night last year.
She sucked smoke into her chest. The sky overhead was pale with the last light of the day, but here beneath the trees it was already dark.
“I’m doing the right thing,” she said, trying to reassure the nervous and excited butterflies flittering in her chest.
And that was when she heard them coming.
At first, her heart leapt, thinking Martin had come to find her. Then she realised the footsteps were coming from the wrong direction. Instead of coming fr
om the river, they were approaching from the road. And they weren’t alone. She heard low voices. Saw torchlight flickering through the undergrowth.
She dropped the cigarette to the leaf-strewn floor and ground it out with her foot.
Shit.
The last thing she needed was to be discovered now.
She edged around the trunk until she was on the opposite side, with only the river behind her. But the voices grew closer, seemingly making directly for this spot.
Should she run?
If she left now, Martin might think she’d lost her nerve. He might leave tomorrow without her, and the thought of being stuck in Pontyrhudd without him was intolerable.
Besides, if she moved now, they’d hear her. They were getting that close. Screwing her eyes shut, she pushed herself up against the tree’s rough bark, willing it to swallow her.
As the sound of footsteps entered the little clearing, she held her breath. Her heart seemed to be trying to punch its way out through her ribs.
No, she thought. Not now. Not when I’m so close . . .
Someone shone a torch in her face. Rough hands grabbed her and pulled her away from the tree.
She blinked against the darkness, her vision still swimming from the glare of the torch.
“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice said. “What do we have by here?”
“Davies?”
“You can call me Ieuan, love.”
“What the fuck do you want?” Ieuan Davies had been in the year above her at school. She remembered him as a petty little thug with delusions of grandeur.
He laughed. “Me and the boys here come with a message.”
Holly’s eyes had started to adjust. In the torchlight, she recognised Davies’s cronies and former classmates: Jim Perkins and Owen the meat—a pair of proper morons with hardly a brain cell between them.
“What message?”
Davies’s lip curled. “That we don’t like the RAF boys, see? We don’t like the way they crack onto our local girls.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’re up here to meet one, aren’t you?”
“No.”
“Yes, you are. My old man heard Steve Woodrow talking about it in the pub. Said he knew you got knocked up by one of those bastards.”
Alice looked around. She had her back to the river and nowhere to go. Where was Martin?
In the direction of the stone circle, blue lightning danced soundlessly between the trees.
“I don’t want no trouble,” she said.
Davies’s sneer turned into a smirk. “It don’t matter what you want.” He held a hand to Owen and the lad passed him a knife. “As I told you, we’re here to send a message.”
22.
“PUT THE KNIFE DOWN.” Scott held out a warning hand. “Just put it down and we can talk about this.”
Perkins ignored him. His attention remained fixed on Holly.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”
“Then put the knife down.”
“I can’t.” Perkins looked suddenly stricken. “I haven’t finished yet.”
In the corner of her vision, Holly saw Scott inching forwards. She spoke to keep Perkins focused on her.
“Finished what?”
“I have a list. Davies, Owen . . .”
“What about Daryl Allen.”
“Who?”
“The fellow you left in the graveyard with his guts hanging out.”
“Oh, him.” Perkins shrugged. “He was a favour for a friend.”
“What friend?”
“Lisa Hughes. She’s the reason I’m here. Her death’s what kicked this all off again.”
Scott had sidled almost within striking distance. Barely taking his eyes from Holly, Perkins lunged with the knife. Scott tried to deflect the attack with his forearm, but the momentum of the thrust pushed his parry aside, and he cried out as the blade sank into his stomach, a few inches above and to the left of his navel.
Holly tried to intervene, but she was too slow on her crutch. Before she’d managed to take more than a step, Perkins was facing her again, holding the blood-greased knife at arm’s length.
“Please don’t come any closer,” he said.
Scott sat with his back against one of the stones. His face had turned deathly white, but he had both hands clamped over the entry wound in his midsection. Thick, dark blood oozed between his fingers. His feet squirmed in the mud.
“You have to stop this.” Holly blinked away mental images of the injured kids at Hawk Road Primary School. “This man needs medical attention.”
Perkins gave a snort. “I warned him to leave. He should have listened.”
“Was he on your list?”
The man’s expression faltered. “No.”
“Then you don’t have to let him die. You could help me to help him.”
“Why should I? Nobody was there to help me when I needed it.”
Holly took a deep breath. She was sure she could use her crutch as a weapon if she had to, although that would leave her dangerously off-balance.
“So what are you going to do?” she asked. “Are you going to try to kill me, too?”
Perkins’s eyes widened. “No!”
“Then give me the knife.”
“I can’t. Not yet. I still have one person left on my list.”
“Who?”
Perkins pressed the tip of his knife to the underside of his jaw. “This guy.”
“No.”
“He’s the last on my list. I owe his dad that much, at least.”
Holly hobbled towards him. “No.”
“I’m just glad I got to see you again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I always wondered how you’d turn out.”
Perkins took a firm two-handed grip on the handle. He was going to push the knife up through his soft palate and into his brain, and Holly didn’t think she could close the distance between them in time to prevent it.
“Stop!” The voice came from the bridge. Holly turned to see Mrs. Phillips striding towards them in a black silk ball gown, with mud on her hem and a thunderous expression on her face. Amy Lao hurried to keep up with her.
“Stop this at once,” Mrs. Phillips said. She jabbed a gnarled root of a finger at Perkins. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Go away,” Perkins said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“Oh, but it does!” The old woman drew herself up. “Because I know exactly who you are.”
“So?”
“So release poor Neil, and stop this foolishness.”
Holly tried to intervene, but the old woman would not be deflected. Lao rolled her eyes and shrugged.
The knife lowered a fraction. “If you know who I am,” Perkins said, “you know why I have to do this.”
Mrs. Phillips made a face. “Alice, you don’t have to do anything.”
“Do you know what those bastards did?”
“I do, but you aren’t making things any better. Not really. And do you think your daughter wants to see you push a carving knife through Neil Perkins’s noddle? I don’t think she does. Poor lamb’s seen enough already.”
Perkins turned his eyes to Holly. They were wide now, and glistening.
“I’m sorry,” he said. The knife fell from his fingers and implanted itself tip-first into the soft ground. “I’m so sorry.”
Holly moved forward and pulled a pair of cuffs from her jacket pocket. She had some difficulty securing Perkins’s wrists one-handed, but the man didn’t struggle.
When he was securely trussed and kneeling on the ground a safe distance from the knife that still protruded from the grass like an Arthurian sword, Holly sent Lao to raise the alarm. Then she turned to Mrs. Phillips.
“What the fuck was all that about?”
But the old lady had collapsed, and only the crows in the trees could provide any answer.
23.
AFTER T
HE FUNERAL, HOLLY sat in the car at the kerb outside the hotel.
“Are you sure you’re all right to drive?” Scott asked for the fifth time since they’d seen Mrs. Phillips laid to rest beside her brother.
“I’m fine sitting down,” Holly replied, tapping her hands against the steering wheel. “I only use my ankles on the pedals. No weight on my knee at all.”
Scott was wearing one of his suits. A black one, with a navy shirt and a silver tie, which flapped in the sea breeze. Beneath the shirt his knife wound had been cleaned and stitched. He would be stiff and sore for some time but expected to make a full recovery. Lao stood beside him in a black dress with matching pillbox hat and veil.
“What are you going to say in your report?” she asked.
Holly shrugged. “What is there to say? Constable Perkins was in love with Lisa Hughes. When she was killed, he suffered some sort of psychotic break. He killed Daryl for obvious reasons. Then killed Mike Owen in order to get to Ieuan Davies, because he knew Davies and Hughes had had an affair.”
“Simple as that?”
“As simple as that.”
“And what about all that stuff about your mother?”
“Everybody in Pontyrhudd knows about Ragged Alice. It’s not surprising he’d latch on to the story.”
“So, nothing to do with those photographs Woodrow gave you?”
Holly shook her head. She was anxious to get on the road back to Carmarthen. “The man’s an acid casualty,” she said. “Probably a conspiracy theorist, too.”
Lao looked unconvinced, but Scott seemed satisfied. Holly smiled at him. “It’s been good working with you,” she said.
He looked surprised but tried to cover it. “Good to work with you, too, guv.”
“Maybe I’ll see you again.”
“I’d like that.”
Holly turned the ignition and he stepped back. She gave Lao a final wink and pulled away. Scott raised a hand in farewell, but Lao continued waving madly as Holly traversed the entire length of the seafront.
Then she was through the town and climbing up the valley, away from the sea and the shadow of the lighthouse, letting Pontyrhudd fall away behind her like a shed skin. As the car emerged from the shadow of the valley and the bright afternoon sun dappled the dashboard, she felt a stirring at the back of her head.
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