I made some coffee, gritted my teeth and settled down to read the account of the case outlined in the book:
Extract from True Crimes of the 20th Century, by Douglas Hosegood:
Megan Foster – THE CHILD KILLER WITH A CLEFT IN HER CHIN
Megan Foster came from a normal, middle-class home, and the Fosters, by all accounts, kept themselves to themselves and were well liked. No one could have envisaged that Megan would turn out to be what all of us secretly can’t bear to think of: a child who has no innocence, who is truly evil, who is, in fact, a monster.
On 23 September 1981, 8-year-old Megan was playing with other children in the yard of her school, whose name and whereabouts cannot be disclosed for fear of compromising her anonymity, now that she has a new identity. Suddenly one of her playmates started screaming, having discovered the body of Aiden Caulfield, five years old, an angelic little blond-haired boy who was particularly small for his age. Aiden was lying on his back against the wall, immobile, and despite the efforts of the teacher who’d been summoned, he was obviously dead, apparently suffocated or strangled.
It was a mystery. No one had seen what had happened. The school was immediately closed, the children were sent home, and the police questioned everyone who was in the vicinity. First of all it was assumed that an adult had somehow gained entry to the school grounds and attacked the child, but no one had seen any adults who weren’t accounted for.
That’s when some of the adults who had anything to do with Megan thought she was acting strangely. Although she was clearly upset about Aiden’s death, Megan refused to even talk about it to anyone, not her teacher and not her friends, apart from her initial token denials.
When she was taken in for questioning, with all the paraphernalia of social workers, her mother, doctors and other medical professionals attending, she denied having been responsible. However, eyewitness accounts afterwards confirmed that she’d been playing ‘strangling games’ with children in the playground for several weeks. Two witnesses finally admitted seeing Megan with her hands around Aiden’s throat shortly before he’d been found dead. Her teachers reported that she was known to be a ‘skilful liar’, and, despite her pleas of innocence, the court case concluded that she was guilty.
The police psychiatrist, who’d attended the questioning, stated that Megan displayed classic sociopathic tendencies. She offered no explanation for her actions, and no reason for her unprovoked attack, continuing to deny that she was guilty, accusing a boy (who cannot be named) of being the killer, not her. The medical professionals concluded that the fact that she always denied killing Aiden proved that she was incapable of facing up to the consequences of her horrendous actions.
The drama of death.
I thought about it, remembering the case of Beverley Allard, the nurse who’d killed children in her charge, allegedly because she enjoyed the feeling of high drama when she summoned medical assistance, and was delighted to be at the centre of the inevitable attempted ‘resuscitation’ attempt. ‘Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy’ was the fancy name for it. But Beverley Allard thoroughly enjoyed the excitement of a child’s death, she wanted to be at the centre of attempting to save the life, to be a heroine. Megan Foster had killed another child and then lied about it, shying away from any responsibility.
And yet. Lucy was working as a volunteer in a hospital. A place where there were vulnerable people.
I spent the next couple of hours on a family history website, checking the births for 1973 for Hertfordshire, and sure enough, discovered that a Lucy Green had been born in the village of Chorton Hardy to Daniel and Alison Green.
So thank heavens, a Lucy Green had been borne, and was exactly the same age as my Lucy. And Lucy’s account of her early life matched that of the birth record I’d just discovered. However thorough the government body that established false identities might be, I couldn’t imagine they’d be able to tamper with the official records of births and deaths. How could they conceivably fabricate parents, christenings, and all the rest of it? Presumably when a person was issued with a new identity they had to invent a fictitious early life for the outside world, up to the point that their change of identity occurred. A fictitious life which could not, of course, be documented officially in any way whatsoever.
Everything was okay then.
Except there were other possibilities.
If my Lucy was in fact Megan Foster, then the real Lucy Green was someone else entirely. Someone else who had to be somewhere, who presumably would not want her identity copied. Or was she dead? Assuming Lucy had been Megan Foster, had she somehow discovered that Lucy Green had died, and applied for documents in her name, just as the killer in the novel The Day of the Jackal, had done? And why would she need to bother anyway, when presumably the government had issued her with a bona fide new identity and all necessary documentation?
But I knew that it was not possible. Since the time that Frederick Forsyth’s thriller had been written, the world had moved on. Passport security had improved beyond all recognition, and the novel itself had highlighted a weakness in the system that had since been tightened up. With the recent terrorist scares, security had obviously become much more stringent, even within the last few years. Besides, in these days of computers it was hardly likely that when you applied for a replacement passport there wasn’t a simultaneous check made to confirm that no death certificate had been issued for the same person.
That left only two possibilities. Firstly that Lucy was indeed Lucy Green, who bore an uncanny resemblance to the child killer; which, I was gradually coming to realise, was by far the most likely explanation. Secondly, my Lucy was really the child-killer Megan Foster, and for reasons of her own had befriended the real Lucy Green, killed her, then taken her identity. Was it possible? Was it even practical? And why would she want, or even need to do it? After all, the whole point of being given a new identity was that there was no need to cover your tracks, you could be perfectly upfront about everything in your life after the date you were released from prison.
However, there were other possible scenarios. What if someone had discovered her true identity, and the only way to prevent her new persona being compromised was to create another? Could Lucy Green, if she was indeed another person, have discovered the truth? And, because Lucy was threatening to expose her, Megan had killed her, hidden the body somehow, and then managed to take on her identity? She could have killed the real Lucy Green, then applied for another passport in Lucy’s name, using her own photograph. Yet I was certain that there was a system whereby someone in authority who knew you personally had to sign the photo to confirm the person was indeed the one photographed. But was there some possible way round the rules? And what about Lucy Green’s relatives and friends? I just didn’t know the answers.
And then came the worst thought in the world. The Bible Killer’s first victim had been found shortly after the date that Lucy had started working at the hospital. And she’d been partially strangled, just as young Megan’s victim had been.
Then, with a sickening jolt, I remembered the perfume on her dressing table. Heaven’s Dust.
The same type of perfume that Caroline remembered in the seconds before she’d been attacked from behind.
That’s when I remembered Lucy’s words: “Do you believe in forgiveness?”
I was still in love with Lucy, nothing could change that. Yet I was in love with the Lucy I knew. Was I still in love with her if it turned out that she was someone else entirely?
Suddenly, I heard a blast of gunfire.
Chapter 7
RUNNING SCARED
Plaster dust filled the air as a series of holes appeared in the wall to my left. I dived to the ground. There were footsteps on the gravel outside. What had been a window was now just a gaping jagged hole. I heard the familiar screech-click-clack of a pump-action shotgun ratcheting another shell into its breach.
Heartbeat cranked up high, I crawled across the room. My pistol was still in
the car.
Another gunshot. The clock on my mantelpiece exploded. I heard an abrupt crash, then the squeak of breaking timber. My front door had been broken open. I could hear footsteps.
The kitchen door was several yards away from the window. Inside a porch.
One decision. And it had to be the right one.
I leapt up and vaulted through the broken window. Fell onto the gravel, face down. Scrambled to my feet and ran. A sharp pain tore at my shoulder. I recollected the sudden sensation of pressure in my arm as blood spattered onto my hand and I realised that a jagged edge of glass must have ripped through my flesh.
Movement from the porch. Another shotgun blast.
But I was running. Running towards my car.
I made it, leaping into the driver’s seat and firing the engine. Smashed a chunk out of the wall as I tore the wheel in a turn. Skidding on the gravel, I slalomed out of my gate, hearing the slamming doors of another vehicle behind me.
Driving fast along the road through Mulligan’s Wood. Speeding under the overhanging branches. Headlights in the mirror, getting closer. The main road.
They were getting closer.
I slammed on the brakes suddenly. Unable to stop in time, they crashed into my boot. The judder and wrench threw me forward, jerking the seatbelt tight until I snapped it open and squirmed around in my seat. In those seconds I managed to reach under the dashboard, tear the Glock free from its securing duct tape and ratcheted a shell into the breech. I fired three times through the rear window.
Then I accelerated away.
The other car didn’t follow me.
* * * *
Jack, why haven’t you phoned? Where are you? What’s happening?
The texts springing onto my phone were getting on my nerves, so much so that I switched it off, as I drove out of the city along the A20, leading towards the M20. I phoned a windscreen repair company, and they repaired my car’s rear window at a service station forecourt, so that now there would be no visible evidence that I’d been involved in an incident where a firearm had been discharged.
Last night’s nearly successful attempt on my life by Sean Boyd’s men had convinced me that I couldn’t risk going back to my house. I had to go into hiding. Somehow they knew I was still writing Hero or Villain? How did they know? Was there an informant at the publishers?
But, separately, the other events of yesterday were still fresh in my mind, and I was still trying to rationalise what was happening regarding Lucy. Since I couldn’t risk going back home, my plan was to try to find out exactly what Lucy had been doing for the past few years, so as to satisfy myself, once and for all, she was not the killer, Megan Foster.
Megan Mary Foster. Lucy Green. Where they one and the same?
Of course I was still in love with her, nothing could alter that. On the face of it I couldn’t believe that there was any possibility that she could be the same person as Megan Foster. Yet a tiny voice in my mind couldn’t stop nagging at me, saying, supposing your worst nightmare is fact: supposing the woman you’re in love with was once a murderer, could you forget it, and accept that whatever horrendous, unforgivable things she’d done as a child, she was now a changed person, someone who’d never do those things again?
Never do those things again?
Right now, there was a killer on the loose, who’d already killed three times. And one of the victims was had been visiting a patient at the same hospital where Lucy worked. Lucy said she had been in York at the time, but how did I know that she hadn’t returned last night and gone back to York this morning?
The truth was, if Lucy was Megan Foster the child murderer, and she no longer posed a threat to society, as the psychiatrist had stated, how could I reconcile my feelings for her? They were tainted irrevocably. It was humiliating to realise that the incredible ‘bond’ I’d felt when I’d first seen her face had nothing to do with an instinctive attraction as I’d thought at first. The strength of my reaction to seeing her face was actually down to shock: a terrible reminder of when I’d seen her face in the book, and looked into the eyes of a monster. Everything about my relationship with Lucy seemed like a dreadful perversion of love. A sickening travesty.
Trouble was, she hadn’t invented a false identity for my benefit, she was living it. Living the life of Lucy Green, who, I had found out, had undoubtedly been born in Chorton Hardy, Hertfordshire on the date she’d said. And gone to school in the same area – all the facts matched up.
So the truth had to be that Lucy was Megan Foster’s doppelganger, there was simply no other credible explanation. But if I didn’t examine the one other possibility, I’d never be able to think straight again, and I would always wonder.
Everything about Lucy was turning out to be a mystery. Because I was still in love with her, I was terrified. Hoping against hope there was some kind of reasonable explanation for everything.
Lucy had told me that she’d been living in Cambridge up until a few months ago, so I emailed a private detective agency I occasionally use, who can trawl phone directories and electoral registers around the country to find addresses to match up to names. They found an address in Cambridge for a Lucy Green, for this time last year. I hardly knew what I was expecting to find out, most likely a dead end.
Abelard Terrace was a row of three-storey terraced white houses on the outskirts of town. As I stood outside the front door of number 23, and noted the names printed against bells, I realised that most of these houses had probably been split up into flats for students. There were six names.
I pressed each in turn. At the final one, Bernard Talgarth, I was rewarded with a snappy male voice barking through the intercom. “Yeah?”
“Hi. I’m a very old friend of Lucy Green, and I’ve only just come back from abroad. I wondered if she still lived here.”
“Who?”
“Lucy. Lucy Green.”
“Come in, mate. I’ll meet you in the hallway.”
The buzzer sounded and I pushed the heavy old door inwards and stepped into a musty hallway that looked as if it had been painted cream in 1960, and the colour had taken half a century to fade down to its current morbid yellow. The dirty brown carpet was largely threadbare and a flight of stairs was directly ahead. There was a rank smell of rotting cabbage.
An extremely tall twentyish man with a shock of uncombed dark hair and a white tee shirt emblazoned with the words F . . K Me! emerged from a door in front of me. He had the fashionable stubble of not-quite-beard and not-clean shaven that didn’t suit him – in fact he looked like a tramp. Black whiskers wobbled unhappily above a prominent Adam’s apple as he talked.
“Lucy Green. Yeah. I think she was the tenant before me in my flat – I moved in six months ago. Kept getting her mail delivered here for a long time – still get the odd letter sometimes.”
“You never met her?”
“No, mate.” He thought for a moment. “Tell you what though, I’ll give you the landlord’s address – he’ll probably have a forwarding address.”
“Great, thanks.”
As Bernard Talgarth scribbled an address on a bit of paper for me, he was chattering on all the time. “Mean old bastard he is. Never fixes things, but if the bloody rent’s a day late he’s on it faster than a cat on a bloody rat, know what I mean?”
“I’ve met the type.”
“As a for instance, our bloody drains need fixing, but will he get a plumber? Will he fuck! Stench down in the basement where the washing machine is, getting worse and worse. Sewage, bloody raw sewage, I reckon, leaking out I shouldn’t wonder – it’s a blimmin’ health hazard!”
I found the landlord’s address with the help of my Satnav and knocked on the door of a bungalow in another part of Cambridge. The door opened.
Mr Gribbins was short and elderly, with a fringe of white hair around his bald dome. He didn’t invite me in.
“Lucy? Yes I remember her. Did a runner, didn’t she?”
“A runner?”
“Some
times happens. Mind, I was surprised, she seemed a nice girl, but you just never know with people do you? Just shipped out without letting me know. I kept her month’s deposit, so no harm done. But all she had to do was tell me, and she could have had her money, couldn’t she?”
“She just left without warning? No forwarding address?”
“Just said so, didn’t I?”
Gribbins looked as if he was anxious for me to leave.
“Can I just make sure we’re talking about the same woman,” I said, showing him a picture on my phone I’d taken of Lucy recently.
He peered down at it, and I had a close up of the nest of hairs in his ears.
“I think that’s her. Although when she looked at the flat and moved in later she was with her friend, Susan Elkins, and I’m afraid I can’t be certain which is which. That’s either Susan or Lucy – one or other of them.”
“Susan Elkins?”
“Yeah, yeah, her mate, Susan. She helped her move into the place, they seemed very close, I almost wondered if they were sharing for a bit, though there’s not a lot of space. I don’t ask questions. If they want to share and halve the expenses, who am I to complain?”
“Thanks for your help.”
“Hope you find her.”
Back in the car I wondered at this latest turn of events. Thoughts were skittering to and fro, but I couldn’t make sense of them. Then something the unshaven guy had said came back to me. “Smell in the basement. Won’t fix the drains...”
And Gribbins couldn’t be sure whether the image of Lucy was her at all, or if it was her friend, Susan Elkins. I had to check it out. Returning to 23 Abeline Road, luck was with me. The door happened to be unfastened, so I walked into the hall, and went alongside the stairs to the far end where there was a door marked Utility Room.
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