But it was true.
When Adam arrived back at the table he announced that he’d settled the bill, and fended off my attempts to pay my share:
“I’ve just been made chief crime writer. I’m celebrating! My treat.”
We left the restaurant and walked out into what was still a warm and quiet August night. Adam looked into my eyes, and his were sparkling in the streetlights:
“Fancy a walk?” he asked.
“Sounds lovely” I said, and we strolled off, hand-in-hand.
*
I was thinking about when we were going to kiss: the previous times we had been together it had just sort of happened; when the moment felt right. It was bound to happen soon, and I was anticipating it with a tingle in my stomach.
Adam had his hand around my waist. We were walking along the seafront, just as it started to get less populated by restaurants and bars and become a bit more genteel, with a bowling green and residential houses overlooking it. Further along the route, the big white cliffs of Tardown Head were visible: the tide was out and the jagged rocks at its feet could clearly be seen, resting in the moonlight like big sleeping dogs.
Adam had grown quieter as we walked along the promenade, as had the night. There was a lot less traffic on the road, and fewer fellow late-night walkers around us. Adam guided me down a little alleyway that ran off from the seafront, and led to a little, dark car-park lined with trees. The night suddenly seemed that little bit darker.
The car-park was almost empty, with only a handful of cars and a white van in one corner.
Adam put a hand on each of my shoulders and rested me up against a tree. He looked into my eyes with an intensity I hadn’t seen before, and I remember thinking he was finally going to kiss me. I was ready for it. A car-park wasn’t the most romantic of surroundings, but maybe Adam just couldn’t wait.
Adam tilted his head to one side, and leaned backwards. Then he pulled back his right arm and slammed his clenched fist right into my face.
My world rocked from side-to-side, then descended into darkness.
Fifty-three
(Anna)
(Friday night)
What followed was a mist: a black mist of strange and half-forgotten feelings. I remember being dragged along the ground, too weak to resist. I remember being driven. I remember the sensation of movement and the musty smell of petrol and metal; the hum of an engine echoing somewhere around me.
Then there was silence and darkness again. I drifted off into some weird half-dream, in which I knew something bad and unsettling had happened but the facts of which my memory couldn’t quite grasp. It felt as if I’d somehow wrapped my brain in cotton wool for its own protection.
Consciousness finally washed back over me after some indefinable period of time had passed. I opened my eyes and stared groggily through the darkness at the locked back-doors of the van. I then experienced that brief spell of mindless confusion that you get when you wake up in a strange house or hotel room. That sense of:
Where the hell am I?
Then it came back to me: I saw again that strange look that had been in Adam’s eyes; felt once more the force of his fist smashing into my face. I felt a deep, throbbing pain somewhere behind my eyes; the trauma finally seeping through the cotton wool.
Slowly, ominously, the doors of the van started to open...
Fifty-four
Lizzie Dee was in her mid sixties now, and her once flame-red hair had long turned to grey. She walked with less agility than she had in the past, but still made a point of going nearly everywhere on foot, exercise which gave her a wiry strength even as the shadows of old-age approached.
Life hadn’t been easy for Lizzie for quite a while: in fact she had forgotten what it was like not to have to struggle: either with money or family. Things had been okay when Malcolm was alive: his train driver’s wage kept them above water, and allowed his wife to remain a stay-at-home mum to their daughter Jennifer. But cancer had claimed him whilst Jennifer was on the brink of her teens.
Her father’s death had sent Jennifer spiralling into a few years of teenage rebellion: drinking, smoking, skiving school and hanging out with some unsuitable friends. By the time she hit seventeen she had made a fairly good fist of throwing it all away: she had dropped out of school, and was pregnant; apparently by some travelling musician, who had journeyed on to some far corner of the world in blissful ignorance of the little seed he’d sown.
Jenny didn’t even know his last name.
Their child, Sarah Jane Dee, was born in 1994, and when Lizzie first cradled her tiny body in her arms she sensed that the little child would be in for some tough times.
But quite how tough she couldn’t possibly have foreseen...
Tragedy struck when Sarah was two and Jennifer was attempting to turn her life around. She had been on her way round to Lizzie’s flat in her little Ford Fiesta to drop off Sarah before attending her evening secretarial course at the local college. Lizzie remembered it as a day of filthy, endless rain; gathering in the gutters and flowing up out of the drains.
At a roundabout on the outskirts of Tarnsey a farm lorry carrying a trailer loaded with tonnes of hay skidded on the wet road, turned over onto its side and dropped its load onto Jennifer’s tiny little car, crushing it like a can of cola. Jennifer died instantly; but Sarah was found unharmed: sleeping peacefully in her baby-seat underneath the twisted metal.
From that day on, Lizzie was to become essentially a single mother in her forties, looking after a little baby alone in a council flat on a widow’s pension.
Sarah had been a strangely quiet baby, who even at two had clearly inherited the family looks: bright red hair and pale skin. She’d grown into a solemn, studious child, and became even more withdrawn as she entered her teens.
And now, of course, even she was gone, and Lizzie was alone.
She reached the familiar dirty stairwell of the West Hails flats and made her way up the wet stairs, clutching her shopping bags in her hands.
Life for Lizzie just went on and on.
Fifty-five
(Friday night)
He looked at the photograph in the light of his torch.
God she was beautiful - so beautiful it still made him feel a bit sick - but sick in a good way: like his heart was still that empty, fluttery void waiting to be filled.
It was getting closer.
He looked at the photograph of Sarah again; to remind himself why he was doing this: to give him the strength he needed. Her eyes seemed to be pleading with him in the glow of the moon.
See it through, my love.
For me.
He looked up at the moon. It was full. He folded the photo up and put it back in his wallet.
“For you.”
Fifty-six
(Anna)
(Friday night)
I tensed my body up into a ball and moved to the back off the van as the doors were being unlocked. As they opened I saw a streak of moonlight behind a pair of dark shoulders. As I focused I saw it was Adam. My stomach lurched in fright at the sight of his face: he looked no different, except for a manic grin which was unlike any expression I’d seen him wear before.
Behind him, through the opened doors, I saw a smattering of stars and the moon: bright and full. Then I saw the dark grass coming to an abrupt stop and giving way to the sheer edge of the cliff.
We were parked at the top of Tardown Head, mere metres from the abyss.
Primal fear and horrified confusion surged through me.
“Adam” I gasped in a strained voice, “what are you doing?”
He smiled that same manic smile and said:
“Don’t call me Adam. Call me CJ.”
Fifty-seven
(Friday night)
It was a still, bright evening, but starting to turn cold. Ricky James turned up the collar of his leather jacket and walked quickly, selecting his contact list from his phone's menu.
He found the number next to the name ‘AC
J.’
He tried calling his cousin.
There was no answer.
Adam Connor Jacks: ACJ; the initials that had always been shortened to CJ by family and friends. That was how everyone closest to his cousin always referred to him; but to the outside world he was simply Adam Jacks: young up-and-coming reporter at the Tarnsey Star. He was doing well for himself, it seemed. But only Ricky knew the truth:
Adam Jacks was a murderer three times over.
And Ricky James was an accessory to murder.
Yes, it was true. Ricky had wanted those girls dead just as much as CJ had. He had wanted them to suffer like they made Sarah suffer. But he didn't want this.
This Anna girl was never part of their plan.
The two boys were born just weeks apart; their mothers were sisters-in-law, and the pair of babies were often placed in the same corner to dribble and gurgle away, content in each others company.
As they grew into toddlers they became inseparable playmates: their mothers would watch in amusement as the little pair escaped into their own carefully-constructed world of make-believe; communicating almost as if they had some secret language. Back then it had seemed cute.
Adam and Ricky were still firm friends during primary school, but as high school beckoned their closeness began to evaporate, almost as if the influx of new faces into their lives had illuminated the fact that they didn’t have all that much in common. They remained on good terms, but athletic Ricky graduated towards the sporty, ‘cool’ crowd whilst the quieter, cleverer Adam found a bookish group of friends and kept his head down.
It was only when Adam joined Tarnsey Youth FC – the football team Ricky starred in - that the deep bond of their infancy was rekindled. On a football tour to the west country the cousins shared a room, and on one long, beer-fuelled night Ricky confessed to his oldest friend what he'd never told anyone else: he secretly despised his evil, controlling bitch of a girlfriend Maggie, and was deeply in love with quiet, gentle Sarah Dee; the girl Maggie had bullied savagely throughout school.
To his astonishment, Adam, or CJ, as he always called him, shared his feelings. Sarah Dee became their shared object of desire, and Maggie Dickens and her gang the focus of their hatred.
Then one night several weeks later, CJ came to Ricky with a plan...
Fifty-eight
(Anna)
(Friday night)
“Call me CJ. Everybody who’s ever loved me called me that: my Grandmother did. Sarah did. You love me too, don’t you? So why don’t you call me CJ as well.”
I didn’t love Adam.
Of course I didn’t.
I had had a crush on someone I thought existed, and I thought his name was Adam Jacks, but I realised now how that person was a pure invention; as made-up and macabre as a nursery-rhyme. There had been no Adam Jacks – not as I knew him - just this person that now stood in front of me. He had been playing a role; and I went along with it like a dumb pantomime audience.
This person, CJ, was a complete stranger: and he was totally mad.
He started whistling and climbed into the back of the van; I tensed up and crawled back into a corner. CJ grabbed my arms firmly and pulled my wrists together. I struggled to pull them away but his grip was too strong. He snapped a cable tie around my wrists and pulled it as tight as he could. He then did the same around my ankles. I kicked and struggled but CJ was too powerful for me. After he had finished tying me up he backed out of the van and knelt by the rear doors. I huddled back into the corner and stared at him in a mixture of disbelief and terror.
There was a brief interlude of silence. I was too terrified to speak; fearing that anything I said might tip CJ over the edge: or cause him to push me over the edge: literally. My frightened mind was racking over my options, but there didn’t seem to be any.
CJ smiled, and spoke:
“Do you believe in the death penalty Anna?”
I didn’t answer.
“I do. They say the question you have to ask yourself is: would you be prepared to do it yourself? It’s all very well agreeing with the principle of a death sentence, but could you pull the lever that opens the trapdoor and allows the noose to break the condemned man’s neck? Could you?”
I shook my head vaguely.
“I could, and I have. Three times. I sentenced Maggie, Callie and Millie to death, and I carried out their punishments myself.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what else to do; it all seemed so bizarre, so unreal. How hadn’t I seen this coming? I was stupid; stupidly naïve, stupidly trusting.
CJ carried on talking.
“Back in the old days; when they still used to carry out the death penalty in this country, it was the tradition for the judge to put on a black cap when he read out the sentence. Do you know why? It was to protect them from the anger of the Gods. The power of choosing between life and death should only really be God’s to exercise. But sometimes mere mortals need to intervene.”
I knew what was coming.
CJ reached into his pocket and took out a black cap. Slowly, he placed it on his head.
As he spoke the full moon loomed behind him, framing his capped head with an eerie whiteness:
“Anna Mary Keating, I hereby sentence you to death”
His madness crackled between us like static.
How did he know my middle name? He knew everything. How did he know everything? He was the one everybody had ignored: the anonymous journalist whose enthusiasm for the case had been easily put down to professional interest. But all the time he’d been hiding in clear sight; behind a carefully-created smokescreen. I saw in that moment that he possessed the cunning of the truly insane. Nothing mattered to him except this.
He continued:
“Anna Mary Keating, you have been found guilty of abandoning friendship; of betraying Sarah Dee and throwing her to the lions: allowing her to be bullied into submission. Without your actions, none of this would have happened. Nobody would have been murdered, because the need for murder would not have existed. You are therefore guilty of murder. You shall shortly have your arm and leg restraints removed, after which you shall be rolled from the cliff edge and allowed to fall onto the rocks below. The world will always assume your death was suicide. Only I shall know the truth, but I will never tell.”
I looked at him in sheer shock: his eyes were steely but oddly empty. Mad.
“May God have mercy on your soul.”
Fifty-nine
(Friday night)
This was never part of the plan, never, ever part of the plan, Ricky thought to himself as he half-walked and half-ran through the night.
His mind was racing:
The plan was simple. Brutally simple. CJ would kill the three girls, and I would deflect all the suspicion away from him.
I would be the one with the motives; the one who’d display the guilty behaviour and the odd reactions. But I’d have a solid alibi for each murder.
CJ would become a respectable, disinterested outsider with no motive or link to the case.
It would drive the police mad.
That’s what we discussed, what we agreed on, what we swore to…
But Anna Keating? Why? Now CJ was planning to kill someone he could be linked to. He and Anna had been seen out and about with each other. He’d be treated as a suspect. He’d be arrested. He’d give the game away.
Was he crazy?
Yes, concluded Ricky. That’s exactly what he was. In truth, he’d always been a bit crazy: he was a triple murderer, after all. But now it was clear he’d crossed the line into total insanity. Maybe he’d developed a taste for killing; picked up a lust for blood and power, and would just go on and on until he was caught…
Ricky knew he had to stop him; had to stop this madness.
He started to sprint through the cold moonlight.
Sixty
(Anna)
(Friday night)
The sight of CJ in his black cap had filled my veins with an icy terror; but a
fter delivering my ‘death sentence’ he slammed the doors shut again and I heard the van doors lock. Silence wrapped around me once more.
My terror hadn’t diminished, but through my fear I slowly began to grasp hold of rational thought and cling onto it for dear life. I wasn’t dead yet, that was a start; and I was still in the back of the van. For a terrible minute I thought CJ would merely release the handbrake and push the whole vehicle over the edge, but it was clear now he intended my death to look like suicide, and sending me to my death in a van with my limbs restrained would obviously point to murder. This meant he would need to remove me from the van and cut the ties from around my hands and feet.
This would involve a struggle; and that was my chance.
I would scream, kick, spit and bite: I would do anything I could to avoid him getting me out of the van.
While I was in that van I was safe…
If I could just stay in here and prolong things for as long as possible there was hope; a chance that somebody would see the van at the cliff’s edge, or hear my screams…
Screams…
I really should be screaming, I thought.
I began to yell and scream, so loud it seemed my throat would rip in half:
“Aaaaaarrrrrgggggghh!”
“Heeeeelp”
I started kicking my feet into the side of the van.
I heard the doors unlock and open. CJ climbed in; his face a blank mask, and crawled towards me. I bunched myself up into the back like a cornered spider.
Sarah Dee Was Here Page 12