by Alex Pine
When she opened the door, it was her uncle who was standing there. He was shivering in his bulky coat, his rheumy eyes narrowed to slits and his lips purple.
‘Bloody hell, what are you doing walking around in this weather?’ she said, then stood aside to let him in.
He didn’t say anything until she’d helped him off with his coat.
‘I heard what happened to Daniel,’ he said. ‘I assume you’ve been told.’
‘Of course. James let me know. Where have you been? I rang you earlier but got no answer.’
‘I went to the garage to check on my car, but it was closed so I headed back to the pub. That’s when Martha told me about Daniel. I was going to call you, but as usual I couldn’t find my bloody phone so I just came straight here.’
‘Come into the kitchen and I’ll make you a hot drink. You look half frozen.’
She made him tea and put some biscuits on a saucer, placing it in front of him at the table. He warmed his hands on the mug, and said, ‘So what about Daniel, Annie? I hope you’re not going to lose any sleep over it. The man was a monster and he made your parents suffer so much.’
Annie felt tears pressing again her eyes and she had to blink to keep them back.
‘It’s just come as such a tremendous shock,’ she said. ‘I can’t get my head around it.’
‘I don’t imagine many people will be grieving for the bastard, Annie. So you shouldn’t.’
She knew that Bill was trying to be helpful, to console her, but she really wanted to be by herself. The news had filled her with conflicting emotions and she wasn’t yet ready to talk about them.
‘They’re saying it happened down by the garden centre, close to his dad’s bungalow,’ Bill said. ‘And that he was stabbed just like Charlie Jenkins and Lorna Manning.’
Annie nodded. ‘It’s the same killer all right. And that makes it even more unsettling.’
‘Well, it’s about time that husband of yours found out who it is, Annie. I don’t understand why that’s proving so difficult in a village as small as this.’
Annie sat back and ground her teeth. She would have told him that he was being unfair if it wasn’t for the fact that she agreed with him.
The killer was making it seem so easy, and at the same time he was making the police – and James – appear incompetent.
‘I actually saw Daniel last night,’ Bill said. ‘He was drinking in The King’s Head.’
‘Did you speak to him?’
‘No, I steered clear. If he’d tried to talk to me, I would have told him to shove off.’
‘So he must have been killed soon after he left there,’ Annie said.
‘I suppose so. I saw him walk out after Martha rang the closing time bell.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Finished my drink and went up to the room.’ He grinned suddenly, showing tobacco-stained teeth. ‘Don’t worry, Annie. I didn’t go after him, if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Don’t be daft, Bill. That would never enter my head.’
His grin grew wider and Annie felt a shiver grab hold of her spine.
‘Now that’s a fib, Annie, and we both know it. You and James got it into your heads that I might be the murderer. James made it obvious last night over dinner with all his questions. I cottoned on to what he was doing pretty early on, but it didn’t bother me then and it doesn’t now. I know that I’ve been acting weird and that inevitably makes people suspicious.’
Annie felt a surge of guilt and her breath locked in her throat.
‘Please don’t bother to deny it, Annie,’ he said. ‘And there’s no need to apologise. In fact, it’s me who should apologise to you. That’s actually why I’m here.
‘What are you on about?’ Annie said.
Her uncle inhaled sharply and at the same time his hands balled into fists on the table.
‘I’ve been keeping something from you, Annie, and I’m really sorry. I realise now that it was a mistake, and it’s time you knew the truth about me.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
James had stayed in the village hall to watch the televised press conference. DCI Tanner began by talking about the hunt for the two missing boys in Ambleside. He appealed for information and photos of the two lads were shown.
He then referred to the murder of the man in Kendal. He’d been identified as a local mechanic who was twenty-five and single. No one had yet been arrested in connection with the killing.
All that was straightforward and there were no difficult questions. But when it came to the Kirkby Abbey killings it was a different matter.
After Tanner had provided details about the latest murder, he was asked some bruising questions about why the police hadn’t revealed the existence of the Christmas cards containing the threatening messages. And the press also wanted to know how it was that the killer was able to strike for a third time when officers were supposed to be on the streets.
The questions came thick and fast, and Tanner struggled to provide coherent answers.
‘Can you now give an assurance that the villagers are safe?’
‘You knew early on that this was the work of a serial killer so why didn’t you alert the public?’
‘We’ve heard that the village has been virtually cut off by the snow. Does that mean they’re trapped with a murderer stalking the streets?’
Tanner repeated that a team of police officers was on duty in the village and that it had been necessary to hold back some information to avoid a panic. He then went on to advise villagers to stay in their homes tonight.
Speaking directly into the camera, he said, ‘It will make the job of protecting you much easier.’
It was painful to watch and James was glad when it was over.
The rest of the afternoon was alarmingly unproductive. A patrol car toured the streets telling people through a megaphone to stay indoors, arrangements were made to accommodate team members overnight in B&Bs, and officers did their best to try to find anyone who had seen Daniel walking from The King’s Head to his father’s house last night.
More work was done over phones and on laptops, but the lack of leads and the severe weather meant that little was achieved.
When it got dark, a shift pattern was worked out, but it meant that only three officers would be on the streets and manning the village hall during the night. Everyone else remained on call.
The last thing James and Abbott did before they called it a day was to visit Ron Curtis. James was pleased to see that Janet Dyer had stayed with him all day and she’d been helping him come to terms with what had happened. She’d even promised him she’d return first thing in the morning. They informed Ron that his son’s body had been transported to the mortuary and that there was no need to provide a formal identification. However, if he wanted to see Daniel, they would arrange transport as soon as they could.
They then gave Janet a lift home so she wouldn’t have to walk, and when they dropped her off, James said, ‘Make sure you lock your door tonight and I suggest you don’t open it for anyone.’
James felt guilty about going home having achieved so little. But he had to accept that as the evening closed in, he really had no choice.
The wind continued to batter the village, piling up snow in small drifts between the buildings. He dreaded to think how bad it would be by the morning.
He’d hoped that Tanner had got it wrong when he’d said at the press conference that Kirkby Abbey had been virtually cut off. But a quick call to control before leaving the hall confirmed that it was. The only road through the village was blocked to the east and the west by large drifts.
As he walked through his front door, he was limp with worry and tiredness, and hoping for a warm welcome from Annie to lift his spirits.
Instead she greeted him in the hall with a sombre expression on her face.
‘Bill’s here,’ she said. ‘I asked him to have dinner with us because there’s something we need to talk about.’
&
nbsp; ‘That sounds serious,’ James said.
‘For him, it is.’
‘What is it?’
‘I think he should tell you himself.’
Bill was waiting for him in the living room.
‘So what’s all this about?’ James asked him, without preamble.
Bill forced a smile. ‘There’s something I have to tell you, James. It’s not good, but hopefully it will help you understand why I’ve been behaving so strangely.’
‘I’m all ears,’ James said.
Bill gave a little cough. Then said, ‘Unfortunately I’ve been diagnosed with dementia, dear boy. I’m slowly losing my mind and my memory. I came here to spend time with Annie before it gets to the point where I won’t remember who she is.’
James was stunned. ‘Jesus, Bill. I am so very sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault, lad. But I find it increasingly difficult to carry out a lot of everyday tasks properly. Driving is one of them, and I was advised to give it up. I was planning to, after coming here, and then I lost control at the wheel the other day and was lucky not to have ended up dead.’
Annie chipped in at this point and explained that it was the dementia that was causing him to be so forgetful.
‘It was why he didn’t come to dinner on Saturday,’ she said. ‘He forgot he’d made plans with me and called his mate Sid and agreed to meet him instead. And it also slipped his mind that we agreed to meet in the square for the carol service.’
‘I remember most things,’ Bill said. ‘But it’s when I’m away from home that my mind really plays up. On Friday evening, for instance, I went into the village to post some Christmas cards through doors but then forgot where my old pals lived.’
The conversation got no easier when they moved into the dining room and Annie served up the dinner. It was particularly hard for her because she was upset and struggling to put on a brave face.
James was glad when dinner was over. It had been difficult and emotional, and Annie was understandably distraught because she knew that her uncle’s life was about to go from bad to worse and there was nothing she could do about it.
She insisted on walking with him back to The King’s Head afterwards. It wasn’t far, but James didn’t want her walking back by herself so he went with them.
A biting wind was howling through the village and the streets were empty and forlorn.
James felt his stomach contract as he watched Annie hug her uncle at the entrance to the pub and tell him once again to be strong.
When they got back home, James shoved the dinner things in the dishwasher and joined Annie on the sofa where she was stretched out with her feet on the coffee table, staring at the television.
‘The end of a perfect day,’ she said sarcastically as he took her hand and squeezed it. ‘And there was me thinking this was going to be such a great Christmas.’
‘I’m so sorry about Bill,’ James said. ‘But at least we’re not far from Penrith. You can go and see him as often as you like. And you can make sure he’s properly looked after as his condition progresses.’
They sat like that for about half an hour before Annie decided to go to bed and James went to his study.
He checked with the office in Kendal and with central control. He learned that dozens of people living in Kirkby Abbey had phoned the police to say that they were terrified and wanted to see more officers in the village.
Mass hysteria had taken hold, as James had known it would once all the details were made public. And the fact that the village was effectively cut off from the outside made a bad situation much, much worse.
He typed up a report of what had happened today and emailed it to Tanner. He then went over all his notes to try to decide where to take the investigation tomorrow.
Finally, he turned his attention to Lorna Manning’s diaries, which were still sitting on his desk. But he decided that it was too late, and he was too tired, to go through them. He wasn’t even sure it was worth it now that there had been a third murder.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Thursday December 22nd
It should have been a day of joy and anticipation for the people of Kirkby Abbey.
Only three nights until the big day arrived. The decorations were up all over the village and a white Christmas was guaranteed.
But, of course, only the very young children were looking forward to it because they had no understanding of what was going on. Everyone else was living in fear, and the last thing they were bothered about was celebrating the birth of Christ.
James was not a religious man, but for the first time in years he had prayed during the night to a God he didn’t believe in. That was how desperate he was to bring an end to the nightmare. If he couldn’t do it himself then maybe he could count on some divine intervention.
He woke early to the news that the storm paralysing the north of England was being classified as one of the worst in years. Red warnings were in place across the region and in Cumbria another eight inches of snow had fallen overnight.
TV news footage showed council workers desperately trying to clear blocked roads with ploughs and blowers, and people digging their homes out from beneath giant snow drifts that, in some cases, reached as high as the roofs.
A brutal wind was still blowing through the streets of Kirkby Abbey when James was ready to step outside just before seven. The snow wasn’t so heavy now, but there was plenty more of it to come, as evidenced by the thick, dark clouds that filled the sky.
Annie had stayed in bed and before he left the house, James took her up a cup of tea.
‘Be careful,’ she told him. ‘And please don’t take any risks.’
He wrapped himself in his coat and scarf and put on a woollen hat and a face muffler. In the hall mirror he saw he looked like an Arctic explorer.
The short walk to the village hall was hard going and the cold air chilled his lungs. But he got there in one piece and found that DC Abbott had arrived before him.
‘I woke up at five and couldn’t get back to sleep so I thought I might as well come in,’ she said.
The officers who had been on duty through the night were told to go to their digs and get some rest.
James was told that no incidents had been recorded overnight and that the villagers seemed to have heeded the advice not to venture out. Of course, they couldn’t be sure that there wasn’t a body lying in the snow waiting to be discovered.
Before holding a briefing, James got an update from Kendal. He spoke to DS Stevens as DCI Tanner wasn’t in yet.
‘There’s still no chance of getting reinforcements to you,’ Stevens said. ‘We’re being stretched to breaking point as it is. On top of all that, we’re also getting call outs every few minutes from people involved in accidents. And at the last count five villages had been cut off, in addition to Kirkby Abbey.’
The situation was indeed grim.
Stevens went on to say that the post-mortem on Daniel Curtis would not take place today because the pathologist and several members of her team were stuck in their homes.
‘Meanwhile, we’ve been to Daniel’s flat in Keswick,’ he added. ‘Nothing untoward was found and everything that was taken away, including laptop and documents, is being examined as we speak. We’ve also been going through the electoral roll for Kirkby Abbey and checking names against the criminal records database. I can send you a list of three men in the village who have form, one of them for grievous bodily harm against a woman four years ago. It’ll be up to you to find out if any of them had a score to settle with our victims.’
They got as much done as they could even though it was far from easy. Between eight and ten, James and DC Abbott visited the three men on the list that Stevens had sent over, but none of them stood out as likely suspects and they all had alibis for the nights on which the three murders were carried out.
They dropped in on Ron Curtis to see how he was, and found Janet Dyer was already at the bungalow. She had made him breakfast and was keepin
g him company.
After that, the two detectives met up again with Lorna Manning’s son, Chris Drake. His grief was being compounded by the fact that he hadn’t yet seen his mother’s body. He was also anxious to get back to his family in Southend.
James couldn’t offer him much comfort so he simply asked him to be patient. He also had to admit that they still didn’t know who had murdered his mother.
After another sandwich lunch James had to speak to a small delegation of villagers who had turned up at the hall to voice their concerns about the lack of progress with the investigation and the fact that they were all scared witless.
Gordon Carver was among them. The reporter recorded the exchange on his mobile and asked some questions himself, the first of which was, ‘Can you be absolutely sure that a fourth murder was not committed last night, Detective Walker?’
To which James replied, ‘We’ve had no reports of another body or of anyone missing. And despite the bad weather, my officers were on the streets throughout the night.’
He tried his best to reassure the crowd that the team were working flat out, but he was forced to concede that the storm had seriously impacted the investigation.
James ignored the few snippets of abuse that were hurled at him and he was glad when the villagers finally returned to their homes.
The afternoon was not much better for James and the team. Conditions did not improve and it became more difficult to get around.
It would have been true to say that the investigation had stalled, but James didn’t want to admit that, even to himself.
He had a couple more phone conversations with DC Stevens and DCI Tanner and he wrote up yet another report.
It got to the stage around five o’clock when he reluctantly accepted that there was no point just sitting in the village hall.
When the night shift crew reported for duty, he and DC Abbott took it as their cue to leave. James felt sorry for Abbott being cooped up by herself in the B&B so he invited her to join him and Annie for dinner. But she declined, saying that she was so tired she wouldn’t be good company and needed to climb into her bed as soon as possible.