Murderland

by Pamela Murray

  ‘You look a bit better than when I saw you last,’ he laughed, bending forward to give her a kiss on the forehead.

  ‘I just can’t quite remember what happened,’ she confessed. She’d been trying to get her head around the order of events all morning, but couldn’t seem to get past sitting with Claire Rawlins in her living room and drinking the wine she’d brought for them. She thought that a man might have come in, but other than that her memory was a blank.

  ‘Do you want me to tell you,’ Burton asked. ‘Or have the doctors said that it’s better for you to remember things on your own?’

  Fielding sat up a bit further against the pillow. ‘Nobody has spoken to me about it yet, but yes, I’d like you to tell me.’

  As Burton related the events of what had happened two days prior to today, Fielding just couldn’t believe what she was hearing. All these murders had been about what had been said to a couple of overweight boys back in high school? It hadn’t even been her and her friends who had said it.

  ‘I suppose I can see in their twisted minds why they killed the women up in Boldon, but why kill these three people in Manchester as well?’

  Burton wasn’t sure if she was asking herself this out loud or if she was asking him for an answer, but he replied anyway.

  ‘Well, they were trying to frame Alex Carruthers for his great-uncle’s death, and the other two killings were red herrings to throw us off – although, Pratchett did admit that they’d been chosen because of their link to education. Likewise with your two old friends. He had hoped that Carruthers’s job taking him up there during the week would make him the obvious person of interest. And it would have worked as well if we didn’t have the final breakthrough with our own DC Francis’s fiancé recognising him. Can you believe that he was working upstairs in our building all this time?’

  ‘So, in effect, he was keeping tabs on us all the time?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, him and Rawlins.’

  Fielding thought about that for a moment. ‘So did she kill the two girls?’ Burton nodded. After the arrest at Claire Rawlins’s home in Whitley Bay the previous morning they had both confessed everything. Rawlins had committed the two murders on Tyneside and Pratchett the ones in Manchester.

  They had tried to get Fielding to realise her connection to the crimes by leaving the playing cards beside the bodies, but what they had failed to realise – or had chosen not to – was that her link had only been a very tenuous one. Yes, she did remember the twins and the fact that one of them had been hospitalised during the summer holidays after leaving school, but she had no idea why that was. She was far too busy preparing to move away to college and away from her family to wonder what had become of all those in her peer group. Although she’d chosen to use her middle name of Sally when leaving school instead of her given first name of Alice, this was nothing to do with school, it was simply her way of breaking away and making a fresh start for herself in Manchester, away from her disapproving family. In any case, she would never have recognised either of them after all that time; she’d barely recognised Claire when she saw her again.

  ‘By the way,’ Burton changed the subject, ‘Simon Banks is coming out today. Taking a few weeks’ sick leave to get himself back on his feet again. He’s in this hospital a couple of floors up.’

  Fielding smiled. ‘I’m pleased to hear that. So was that Pratchett who attacked him as well?’

  ‘Yes,’ Burton told her. ‘The photograph taken was one of Carruthers with a group of his computer course graduates, and he was on it. Carruthers apparently gave it to him some time ago. There’s something else I think I should mention too. The syringe we found behind you had quite of bit of the drug that they were going to finish you off with left in it. When I questioned Rawlins about it, she said that she just couldn’t put all of it in you. She just gave you enough to make you unconscious. No offence, but that’s an odd thing to do: suddenly get a conscience after already bumping a couple of people off. Beheading one of them as well.’

  Fielding agreed that it was odd considering the circumstances. ‘So why were the victims killed in the manner that they were, did they say?’

  ‘Yes they did,’ Burton told her. ‘And it’s all quite bizarre, but makes perfect sense when you know the reasoning behind it.’ He then went on to tell her each in turn. ‘They were all linked to your favourite Lewis Carroll books, and it was Pratchett’s way of trying to get you to realise who was committing the murders.’

  Fielding interrupted. ‘But did he not realise that neither I nor my friends called them names, it was some of the other pupils?’

  ‘Apparently not it seems, but it was all to punish you and your friends as he saw you three as ringleaders. Being called those names, and knowing what your group was based on, he blamed it all on you all for instigating it.’

  ‘But all those innocent people…’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But that’s what murderers do, isn’t it? They kill innocent people all the time and don’t think twice about it.’

  He gave her a moment before continuing with the reasons. ‘Jennifer Grayson, beheaded, and a queen of hearts card beside her.’

  ‘Off with their head,’ Fielding murmured to herself.

  ‘Caroline Porter was found head down in a planter with the same card, but what the photographs didn’t show us was that the planter she was found in was a large tea cup and saucer.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Fielding said, realising the significance of that. ‘The tea party.’

  ‘And then Mr Jackson dressed in what we initially thought was a clown outfit, but Pratchett said he was supposed to look like the Mad Hatter. He thought that we’d get that instantly, especially with the link to the tannin poisoning which is something that is found in tea. He was quite disappointed that we didn’t get that one. The joker card seemed appropriate, he said. Then Mr Stephenson died with a mouthful of sweets which, if you look at them very carefully – and I’ve since looked at the ME photos – are tiny caterpillars. The king of spades had a gardening connotation. And finally, Dorothy Johnson, beaten to death with a mallet. Pratchett said he couldn’t get his hands on a croquet mallet, but found a very good wooden one that did the trick. Charming man.’

  ‘That’s just so sick.’ Fielding had trouble digesting all of this. This had all happened because some people had inappropriately named the twin brothers at school after characters in a book? Unfortunately, the same series of books that she and her friends had named their little group after. What sort of warped mind devised a plan like that? It was a lot to take in, and she sat staring into the distance, stunned by what she’d just been told.

  Burton gave her some time before continuing, ‘When you’re better, I’ll show you your obituary in the papers.’

  ‘My what!’ she exclaimed. That brought her back to earth with a bang.

  ‘We had to make Pratchett and Rawlins think that they’d killed you as well in Jacob Stephenson’s shed. We knew that they would think that they’d gotten away scot-free, and we suspected that both of them would be heading off up north to Claire’s place in Whitley Bay. I’m so glad that you told me about that place, otherwise it might have taken us quite some time to find her. So we arranged with the local press to run the story of your death. It was quite a gamble as we didn’t really know if either of them would buy a newspaper, but we figured that they might want to see the results of all their work, so it paid off.’

  ‘My death was in the local press up there?’ Fielding was shocked. Although she no longer had any connection to the place, her immediate thoughts went to her mother and her sister and how they would react to seeing something like that.

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t worry.’ Burton got up from his seat and reassured her, sensing that she was becoming agitated as the beeping on her monitor had begun to increase quite rapidly. ‘In fact, I’m going to just step out for a moment as I know that there’s somebody here who wants to see you.’

  ‘No, I’m okay,’ she said, reachi
ng out to try to stop him from leaving, thinking that he was going in search of a doctor, but he just smiled and opened the door then walked through it. She heard a murmur of voices outside in the corridor before the door opened again. When it did, Fielding saw two people walk through it who she had never expected to ever see again. Two people who she had turned her back on when they had all fallen out with one another. Two people who Burton had forewarned about the newspaper report and had brought back down to Manchester with him the previous day – her mother and her sister.

  Acknowledgments

  After not writing anything for four years, when fellow North East writer and Bloodhound Books author, AM Peacock, drew my attention to a local short story competition, I thought that I would try to get into storytelling again. So my grateful thanks go to Adam for mentioning this and for inspiring me to try my hand at crime writing, something which I had never attempted before.

  I will be eternally grateful to Bloodhound Books and to Betsy for giving me this opportunity, and for having faith in me and my writing. I would also like to thank my editor, Clare Law, as well as Heather Fitt, Sumaira Wilson and Tara Lyons for their continued support and guidance.

  Also, Christine Naylor, thank you for your continued support and encouragement. Who would have thought when we were working together in South Shields library in the dim distant past that I’d end up writing a book myself?

  A special mention must go to Heather Rutherford who, all those years ago when we were in our teens, was my writing buddy. She is, and always will be, my oldest friend.

  Last, but by no means least, in memory of those no longer here: Gladys Maddison, Colin Murray, Jack Murray and Kath Murray. Gone but not forgotten. I would have loved you all to have read it.