by S J Bolton
Brian Rushton stood on the doorstep, the shoulders of his coat damp with snowflakes. At his side, paler than he’d ever seen her, was Evi.
‘No!’
All heads turned to see Alice in the kitchen doorway. ‘No,’ she said again. Realizing what she was thinking, what the visit from Rushton and Evi probably meant, Harry felt his skin glowing hot.
‘Alice, don’t…’ said Evi.
Rushton was inside the house, shaking the snow off his shoes, steering Harry out of the way, striding towards Alice. ‘Steady down, lass,’ he was saying. ‘We’re not here to give you bad news. News, yes, but not bad news, so just take it easy. Come on, come and sit down.’
‘What?’ Harry mouthed the single word at Evi. Giving him a look he couldn’t interpret, she banged her heels against the doorframe to get rid of the snow and then set off after Rushton and Alice. Harry closed the door and followed them.
‘Let’s all sit down,’ said Rushton. Harry was about to take the last seat next to Evi when he caught her eye. She looked ill. He turned to the sink and ran a glass of water, handing it over without comment. She drank half of it down.
‘Dr Oliver phoned me just over an hour ago,’ said Rushton. ‘We may have made a breakthrough.’
‘You found Ebba?’ asked Harry, who hadn’t taken his eyes off Evi.
She shook her head. ‘That’s not what this is about.’ She looked at Rushton. ‘Do you want to…?’ she asked.
‘No, you go ahead, lass. You explained it very well to me just now.’
Evi’s hands were trembling, she seemed to be making a huge effort. ‘Last night I went to see a colleague,’ she said. ‘He’s had some forensic experience so I wanted to know what he made of everything.’ She paused and took another sip of water. She swallowed and a grimace of pain shot across her face, as though she had something in her throat.
‘Steve made me see that we’re looking for two people,’ she continued. ‘First, this Ebba person, who we think has some idea what’s been going on and who, in her own way, has been trying to warn you. But because she can only really relate to the children and because she frightens Tom, she hasn’t had much success.’ She turned to look at Harry. ‘You already know she hangs around the church. I think she’s responsible for the blood in the chalice that day and for the effigy of Millie that you found. I think she’s been trying to tell you what happens in the church. About the very real risk to Millie.’
Harry sensed Gareth and Alice share a look. He couldn’t remember how much they knew about the weird events in church. He saw Gareth opening his mouth to speak and his wife hushing him.
‘Most importantly,’ said Evi, ‘we’re looking for the person who’s been abducting and killing the little girls. Now, Steve made me see that it’s all linked. The church is important, but so is the town itself. It’s not coincidence that all the victims come from this town. Whoever the abductor is, he or she has a connection with all of them. They were chosen for a reason. I didn’t find Ebba today, but I may have found the link.’
‘And what’s that?’ asked Gareth.
‘Not what,’ said Evi. ‘Who. I think the link is Gillian.’
Tom was awake. Had he been asleep? He thought perhaps he had but he wasn’t sure. Whose bed was he in? Joe’s. The canopy of his own bunk was several feet above his head. There was light in the corridor, and he could hear voices in the kitchen downstairs. Not that late then. Better go back to sleep. Sleep was a world in which Joe was still OK.
A sudden rattling sound. He sat up. That was what had woken him. A series of sharp, clear taps. Someone was throwing stones at the window.
Joe! Joe was back and trying to get in. Tom sprang out of bed and ran across the room. The curtains were drawn. The fabric was rough against his face and he could feel the draught from outside. ‘Joe,’ he whispered.
He could still hear voices downstairs. Harry’s was the loudest, the most distinct. He could hear a woman’s voice too, much softer and quieter. Not his mum though, someone with an English accent. It could be Jenny, she’d been here earlier. Should he call for his parents, tell them he thought Joe was outside, throwing stones up at the window?
But could he do that to his mum? Make her hope Joe was back when really it was just tree branches scraping against the window?
There were no trees anywhere near Tom’s bedroom window.
He put both hands on the curtains and got ready to pull them an inch or two apart. Just far enough to see what was out there. An inch. Nothing but blackness. Two inches. Three.
The girl was in the garden behind the house, staring up at him.
In the kitchen silence fell. Then Gareth pushed himself to his feet. Rushton held up one hand. ‘Mrs Royle should be on her way to headquarters by now,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I’m just waiting for a call from DI Neasden to tell me she’s safely in custody. We won’t be able to interview her until the duty psychiatrist is in attendance, but at least we know she won’t be able to harm the lad.’
‘Gillian?’ said Alice. ‘Hayley was her daughter.’
‘She wouldn’t be the first mother to kill her own child,’ answered Rushton. ‘Not by a long shot. To be honest, I was sceptical myself when Dr Oliver called. I’m still not 100 per cent convinced, but there are enough questions that need answering.’ He nodded at Evi. ‘Go on, lass,’ he said, ‘you’ll tell it better than I will.
Evi dropped her eyes to the table, then looked up again. ‘I’ve been worried about Gillian for a while,’ she said, and the words seemed to come out of her reluctantly, as though, even now, she found it hard to break a patient’s confidence. ‘I knew there was a lot she wasn’t telling me, and I also knew there was more going on in her head than grief. I’ve suspected childhood abuse from a number of things she’s said and the behaviour she exhibits, but the first really worrying sign for me was finding out she’d lied about the manner of Hayley’s death. She told me and others that Hayley’s body wasn’t found, that it just disappeared in the fire. That wasn’t true. The firemen found remains.’
‘Which weren’t Hayley’s,’ Harry reminded her. ‘Hayley was taken out before the fire was started.’
‘Yes,’ said Evi. ‘But how could she have known that unless she was involved in Hayley’s removal from the cottage? I think Gillian’s refusal to accept that the remains were Hayley’s was her way of dealing with guilt.’
‘OK, but that’s not enough by itself,’ said Harry, looking up at Rushton, trying to read the older man’s face.
Evi sipped from her glass again. ‘No, it isn’t,’ she said. ‘But I’ve been talking to her mother as well, over the last week or so. Gillian’s father was killed in a car accident when she was three. She was in the car with him. She wasn’t hurt, but when the police pulled her out she was covered in her father’s blood.’
‘Christ,’ muttered Gareth.
‘Well, yes. Enough to have a damaging effect on any child. Gillian’s mother married again and – I have no proof of this, but I think Gillian was abused by her stepfather when she was still quite young. Her early medical history shows textbook examples of symptoms of abuse and she talks about him in a way that is very disparaging and full of sexual references. I’ve had to be very careful when I’ve been talking to Gwen. Obviously, I couldn’t ask her outright if Gillian had been abused, but I could hint around the subject. There was something there, I’m sure of it. Gwen knows more than she’s saying. Then when Gillian was twelve her eighteen-month-old sister was killed. She fell from the top of the stairs at her home and landed on the stone floor. Sound familiar to anyone?’
Harry saw Alice reach back and take hold of her husband’s hand. Neither seemed capable of speaking.
‘It’s worrying,’ said Harry, looking at Rushton again. ‘But isn’t it what you call circumstantial?’
‘Her stepfather found the child, but Gillian was in the house too,’ said Evi, before Rushton could respond. ‘She would have seen the blood, heard the man she hated howling in ago
ny. That could make a disturbed teenager feel pretty powerful.’
‘It’s still speculative, Evi,’ said Harry.
‘That’s what I was saying at this point,’ said Rushton, nodding his head.
‘Gillian’s husband was cheating on her,’ said Evi. ‘I think she killed Hayley to punish him, the way she punished her stepfather by killing his daughter. She kills because it makes her feel powerful. Gillian and her mother were at the Renshaws the day Lucy was killed.’
‘Gwen told you that?’ asked Harry. He thought for a second. ‘Actually, I think I knew that. I think Jenny mentioned it herself.’
‘Gillian helped to look after Lucy sometimes, she was a sort of unofficial nanny,’ said Rushton. ‘And she used to babysit for Megan. Of course, we can’t guess why she would want to kill those two, but as I say, questions need to be asked.’
For a moment no one spoke.
‘Gillian was seen catching a bus to Blackburn early yesterday afternoon,’ said Evi.
Still silence.
‘She knew about the pantomime,’ said Alice. ‘She was round here yesterday morning with Jenny. I told her where the boys would be.’
Treading softly with bare feet, Tom made his way down the stairs. The kitchen door was closed. He could hear several voices behind it. He stepped into the living room and crossed to the window that overlooked the garden. It wasn’t easy, pulling back the curtain, she would be so much closer now, but somehow he managed it.
Two eyes. Large and brown, with crepey, wrinkled skin around them, wrinkles that made her look old and not old at the same time. Two eyes staring in at him, with an expression he’d never seen before. He’d seen her full of mischief. He’d seen her threaten him and Millie. He’d never seen her scared.
‘Ebba.’ No sound came out, his lips were forming the words.
‘Tommy,’ she mouthed back.
He stepped away, allowing the curtains to fall back into place. She rapped softly on the window.
What should he do?
If he yelled for his dad, she’d go. And he wanted her to go. It was bad enough without Joe, he couldn’t deal with monsters too.
Tap, tap, tap. Louder this time. He had to make a decision before she broke the glass.
Silence. He reached out and moved the curtain. She was still there. When she saw him she pointed at the window lock, her hand jabbing up and down. She wanted him to open the window. She wanted to come in.
Not in a million years. He opened his mouth to yell.
She might have Joe.
He didn’t care, he wasn’t that brave, she wasn’t coming in. He shook his head and took a step back into the room. The curtains fell back but didn’t quite meet. He could still see her. He saw her reach down into the neck of her dress and pull something out. He saw her press it against the glass.
She did have his brother. How else could she have got hold of Joe’s trainer?
Tom couldn’t stop himself taking a step closer to the glass. When he and Joe had got their new trainers they’d customized them. They’d put stickers on the heels and swapped laces, so that Tom’s mainly black trainers had red laces and Joe’s mainly red trainers had black laces. A red trainer with a black lace was being pressed against the glass and the remains of a Spiderman sticker were visible on the back of the heel.
She had Joe. That’s what she’d wanted all along, one of the Fletcher children. She’d tried to get Millie and when she’d failed she’d gone for Joe instead.
She was pointing at the window lock again. She really, really wanted to come in. His dad and Harry were just along the hall. If he let her in he could grab her, then yell for the others, he could hold her until they arrived. Once his dad got hold of her, she’d have to tell them where Joe was. Let her in, yell blue murder and hold tight. He could do that, couldn’t he? He could be that brave?
Without giving himself time to think, he nodded at Ebba and held up one finger. ‘Give me one minute,’ he was saying to her, without any idea whether she would understand or not. He ran from the room to where the keys were kept in the hallway. One of them unlocked the windows.
Seconds later, he half expected Ebba not to be there any more, but she was. He put the key in the lock and turned it. As soon as the handle was pulled up, she was tugging at the window, opening it and clambering through, as though she’d done it many times before. He stepped back immediately, because he really didn’t want to go anywhere near that horrible lump on her neck. Before he’d had time to think, she’d dropped to the carpet and was dashing across the room.
He cried out and ran after her, but she stopped at the door and closed it. She was between him and the grown-ups now, but he could still yell and grab hold of her.
Could he?
‘Tommy,’ she said. ‘Tommy, please come.’
The window was open and the cold from outside was flooding into the room. Tom knew, though, it wasn’t the cold making him shake; cold didn’t get you like this, not deep down inside. Ordinary cold made by wind and rain didn’t turn the most secret part of you to ice.
It took the sound of his brother’s voice to do that; Joe’s voice, coming out of this girl’s mouth like a message, like a cry from a place he could never go to, like a…
‘Tommy, please come.’
… like a plea for help.
‘What I don’t get,’ said Gareth, ‘if you’re right, is why she switched from girls to Joe. She’s breaking her pattern.’
‘She is,’ agreed Evi. ‘And I don’t think she was ever really interested in Joe. It was Millie she wanted. I think she took Millie out of the party in September and up to the church gallery, and it was just sheer good luck that Harry and the boys arrived when they did.’ She turned to Harry. ‘But do you remember, she was there? When you and the children came out of the church, she was waiting for you.’
Harry nodded. ‘She carried Millie home. None of us were in any fit state. You think she’d been hanging round just to see…’
‘I think she realized someone was coming and fled,’ said Evi. ‘She just didn’t go far. There was still a chance it would work, that you wouldn’t get to Millie in time. Then I think she tried to take her again, back in November, when Tom and Joe stopped her. Since then, I think she’s been biding her time. Until yesterday.’
‘What happened yesterday?’ asked Alice.
Evi could feel Harry’s eyes on her. ‘Gillian is seriously infatuated with Harry,’ she said. ‘And yesterday-’
‘She saw me kissing Evi,’ interrupted Harry.
Alice looked at her husband, then back at Evi. ‘But what’s that got to do with-’ she began.
‘Harry and I don’t have children,’ said Evi, forcing herself to look Alice in the eye. ‘But Gillian knows we’re fond of yours. I’m really sorry, but I think taking Joe is about punishing us.’
‘She and I had words earlier today,’ said Harry. ‘I really wasn’t in the mood to be patient, I’m afraid. She didn’t take it well. Oh shit.’ He dropped his head into his hands.
‘If Dr Oliver is right, Gillian took Joe from somewhere miles away from here so that we wouldn’t connect it with what happened to the girls,’ said Rushton. ‘Joe knows Gillian. If she’d told him she’d been sent by his mother, there’s a good chance he’d believe her.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘Where is Jove?’ he muttered. At that moment, his mobile phone rang. He excused himself and left the room.
Silence fell in the kitchen as everyone strained to catch any part of Rushton’s conversation. They didn’t have long to wait. After less than three minutes, they could hear his footsteps coming back along the hall. The door opened. His sallow skin seemed to have grown paler.
‘Not the best news,’ he said, without entering the room. ‘Jove and his lads found what they thought was a crime scene in Gillian’s flat. Blood everywhere. Turns out she made an attempt on her own life this evening.’
Evi half stood up and didn’t have the strength to make it further. She sank back down again. At her si
de, Harry had gone very still.
Rushton shook his head, as though trying to wake himself up. ‘Her mother found her and called an ambulance,’ he said. ‘She’s in Burnley General now. Slashed both wrists. In a bad way, by all accounts.’
Evi’s hand was covering her mouth. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.
‘Is she going to live?’ said Alice. ‘If she dies…’
‘Take it easy,’ said Rushton. ‘I’m going over now. They haven’t been able to talk to her yet, but I’ll see what pressure I can bring to bear on the doctor in charge. And Jove hasn’t been idle. He’s talking to her mother about any connections she and Gillian have in Blackburn – old friends, relatives, places they used to live.’
‘I need to come with you,’ said Evi, forcing herself to her feet.
‘Evi, I don’t-’ Harry began.
‘I’m her doctor.’
‘No disrespect, Dr Oliver, but I doubt you’re top of the list of people she wants to see right now,’ said Rushton, zipping up his coat. ‘If we think a bit of persuasion is needed, we might call upon the vicar. Excuse me now, folks.’
Rushton was leaving. He was wrong, Gillian was her responsibility, she had to go to the hospital. Evi stood up and set off across the kitchen as the front door slammed behind him. She’d made it halfway along the hallway before Harry caught her.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ he said.
She shrugged his hand off her arm. ‘This is all my fault,’ she said in a low voice, not wanting to wake the children, not wanting Alice and Gareth to hear how seriously she’d messed up. ‘I’m responsible for her welfare and I betrayed her.’
‘You did nothing of the kind.’ Harry, it seemed, wasn’t capable of speaking quietly. ‘Since we met, you’ve gone out of your way to do the right thing. I’m the one who wouldn’t leave you alone, and if anyone’s to blame it’s me. I’m going to the hospital.’
‘Neither of you are going anywhere.’ As Harry turned from her, Evi could see Gareth in the kitchen doorway. ‘And I’ve heard quite enough self-indulgent crap for one night,’ he continued. ‘Now get back in here, both of you, and help us work out where she put Joe.’