A Promise to the Dead: A gripping crime thriller with a brilliant twist

by Victoria Jenkins

  ‘Michael.’

  He didn’t flinch at the sound of her voice. She kept a close eye on his hands, mindful that the gun was within close reach.

  ‘Fourteen,’ she said. It was the number of sets of bones collected and stored in the unit in the man’s garage. ‘Who do they belong to, Michael?’

  Still he said nothing. Alex heard Chloe approaching behind her and raised a hand, gesturing for her to stay back. She thought she had an idea of what might get Michael to talk, but what she wasn’t so sure of was the reaction she might receive. She was prepared to face it for the sake of gaining the truth, but there was no need for Chloe to put herself in any danger.

  ‘Tell me about Stan Smith.’

  There was a visible reaction to the mention of the man’s name. Wyatt leaned forward, his hands tightening into fists in front of him.

  ‘We know what he did,’ Alex told him. ‘Did you see him hurt Oliver? Is that where all this started?’

  Wyatt turned sharply to her. His eyes were red with tears, and in that moment Alex saw beyond the cold-blooded killer to the person he had once been, years earlier: just a boy, terrified and alone; a boy who had suffered hardship and was then exposed to more. A picture was beginning to form, but it was still too blurred to see the details, and it was only Wyatt who would be able to shift it into some sort of focus.

  ‘He didn’t hurt Oliver. I did.’

  A guttural sob escaped him, sudden and loud like gunfire, and he reached for the rifle beside him.

  ‘Alex,’ Chloe said softly, the small plea almost lost to the wind.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Alex said, raising a hand again and keeping her eyes on Wyatt. ‘It’s okay, Michael.’

  The gun was in his hands, pointed upwards to the wide expanse of the night sky above them. Alex could see it moving with the trembling of Wyatt’s hand; a tremble that raced the length of his body, shuddering through him. She knew she would never understand, but she needed to know what had happened. It was only he who could tell her what had gone on all those years earlier. Whatever had happened back then, he had kept it with him all those years, burdening himself with a secret that only he now carried.

  ‘What do you mean, you hurt him, Michael? Tell me what happened.’

  He tilted his head back and looked up to the sky. ‘I didn’t want to do it. I panicked. I didn’t want to be like him.’

  Alex realised he was no longer talking to her. She watched as he ran the palm of his hand across his face, trying to regain some composure. Listening to his words, she attempted to fit them together to try to make some sort of whole. She had assumed that whoever had killed Kieran and sent her the photograph of him and Jake together had been homophobic and the killing had been a hate crime. Now she was surer than ever that Chloe was right.

  I didn’t want to be like him.

  ‘Who killed Oliver, Michael?’

  Michael returned both hands to the gun, his composure regained. ‘I did,’ he said, his gaze focused on the black expanse that lay in front of them, spread across the horizon in a never-ending pool of darkness.

  ‘But Stan was involved somehow, wasn’t he? Did he help you? Did he bury Oliver’s body for you?’

  ‘He wasn’t helping me. He was making sure I could never tell anyone what he’d done to me.’

  And then Alex understood. Stan Smith hadn’t abused Oliver Barrett; he had been abusing Graham Driscoll, a boy who should have been able to call him uncle.

  ‘Did you remove Oliver’s finger? Or was that Stan?’

  At the mention of it, Michael’s body tensed and his hands tightened around the rifle. ‘He called it a reminder.’

  Alex took a tentative step forward, despite the muted protestations of Chloe behind her. ‘So why do the same to the others?’ she asked, wondering who exactly the other victims were. One of those sets of bones in the garage might prove to have belonged to Oliver Barrett. It occurred to Alex that despite Stan’s blackmail, Wyatt had chosen to copy what he had done, repeating the pattern of removing a finger from each of his victims that followed. Had it been an act of ownership, or had he done it to punish himself; as a reminder of what he had done to Oliver and who he was?

  I didn’t want to be like him.

  ‘Why take a finger, Michael?’ she repeated. ‘If you didn’t want to be like Stan, why do what he did?’

  ‘Because I could,’ he said with a shrug, as though there was no reason it shouldn’t make perfect sense. ‘He didn’t have a hold over me then, did he? I chose to do it, not him.’

  Alex wondered whether every kill had made Michael feel more empowered: more Michael and less Graham; less the boy who had been blackmailed by his abuser. ‘Were you and Oliver at Stan’s house?’

  ‘I just wanted to do it there to get back at him,’ he said, putting a hand to the ground and pushing himself up. ‘It felt right at the time, but as soon as it was over I knew I hadn’t proved anything … It was what he’d made me. He’d won.’ He stood and stepped closer to the edge of the cliff, the gun still pointed upright.

  ‘Michael,’ Alex said, her thoughts racing. ‘Come away from the edge.’

  In the distance, the first sound of sirens crept into the air. Alex wished them away, knowing that if they came too close too soon, she would never hear the truth.

  ‘You don’t want to do this, Michael,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to do it, you know that. Talk to me.’

  ‘So things can all be neatly tied up? It’s nice when things work out like that. But life’s not so simple. Look at you. You know that.’

  ‘I pity you,’ Alex said, though there was little truth in the statement. ‘I pity everything you went through as a child, Graham – everything you felt you were unable to confide in anyone about. But what that man did to you doesn’t justify any of this. Kieran, Matthew, Stacey … all those lives you’ve stolen. You say you didn’t want to be like Stan, so why do all this?’

  She watched Wyatt’s jaw tighten in reaction to the implication of her words.

  ‘I’m nothing like him.’

  ‘Why keep those bones?’ she challenged, stepping closer to him.

  ‘Alex, please.’

  She was too close to the edge, she realised. Chloe had stepped forward behind her too, still pleading with her to move back.

  Wyatt turned to her for the first time now, his eyes locking with hers. ‘Why should they get to live their lives the way they choose? We couldn’t.’

  He lifted the gun and aimed it at her. She heard a sharp intake of breath behind her and a rustling of grass as Chloe inched closer, but she kept her eyes fixed on Wyatt’s, no longer seeing the vulnerability that might once have existed there; now just seeing him for what he was: a cold-blooded killer whose bitterness and jealousy had led him to rob his victims of a freedom he himself had never been allowed. Graham Driscoll was well and truly dead.

  There had been a time not so long ago when a gun directed at her might have seemed of little consequence. Like Michael, Alex had felt she had nothing left to lose. But not now. For the first time in a long time, she had everything to live for. She wasn’t going to die out here.

  ‘Kieran wasn’t living his life the way he might have chosen, though,’ she said, keeping her voice calm and steady; not allowing it to betray the uncertainty that was ringing between her ears at the sight of the gun directed at her. ‘None of his family knew he was gay. For whatever reason, he felt forced to keep his sexuality a secret, just as you were. Just as Oliver was all those years ago. You envied a freedom he didn’t really have.’

  ‘He was lost,’ Wyatt said, his words empty. ‘I helped him. I gave him a way out.’

  The sound of approaching sirens intensified and his grip on the rifle tightened.

  ‘You took advantage of him, Michael. It might not have been in the same way Stan took advantage of you, but you preyed on his vulnerabilities. You made a choice. You chose to take those lives. You’ll have to live with that now.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ he said
calmly.

  He stepped back, lifted the gun upright and rested the muzzle beneath his chin. Then he pulled the trigger.

  Forty-Eight

  Alex stared at the list in her hand, neatly printed in Wyatt’s careful handwriting: handwriting she recognised from the envelopes that had been delivered to the station. There were fourteen names in total, with fourteen dates and the details of fourteen burial sites. Wyatt had remembered each of his victims as though they were missing members of his own family; as though the places at which he had buried their remains were his own back yards. In so many ways, of course, they were.

  Each victim – all young men – had been reported missing, but with so many people reported missing every year, each had become just another piece of information that made up the police database statistics. His first victim after Oliver Barrett dated back almost thirty years. In all that time he had managed to keep himself hidden from suspicion, though he had been interviewed by police investigating the disappearance of one young man almost six years earlier. The ways in which he had identified his earlier victims remained unclear, but in more recent years it seemed he had met some of them through dating websites, maintaining his anonymity in the same way that Jake and Kieran had. A couple of the young men whose lives he had taken had worked on properties owned by Lawrence and Wyatt, and when the links were made between them they seemed frustratingly obvious. It seemed that as he grew older, Wyatt had begun to make mistakes; perhaps, Alex thought, why he had introduced the rifle, as a way to overpower victims who were increasingly so much younger and stronger than he was.

  She stood in the garden and surveyed the excavation that was taking place. The family who lived in the house had been horrified when they’d been told why they’d have to move temporarily from their home. She wondered whether they would ever return to it. She stared at the ground in front of her, the patio half dug away and the team of officers searching for the remains Wyatt claimed were buried there. It had been almost a week since he had killed himself. During that time, thirteen of his victims had been found, exactly as he had said they would be. Thirteen families had been informed of their loved one’s fate. Thirteen heartbreaking mysteries had been finally solved, with thirteen new tsunamis of grief to flood those who had known and loved these missing young men.

  The grief that had poured from Matthew Lewis’s parents when she had faced them with the news of their son’s last moments was something that was going to haunt Alex for a long time to come. The anger that had radiated from them at the filming of the television appeal was lost to a pain that would engulf their lives, and she felt helpless in her inability to offer them any comfort. Matthew’s body bore evidence of the impact of the van that had disabled him, but his death had been brought about by Wyatt’s rifle.

  Kieran Robinson too had been shot. Alex had visited Linda Robinson, who had broken down at the news of her son’s death. Kieran’s sister Hannah had been there too, transformed by the reality of her brother’s final moments from the angry young woman Alex had previously encountered to a sobbing child. Linda was awaiting a court date for a GBH charge for the stabbing of her husband, but with Gareth Lawrence extorting money from his own company and now no business partner to chase it up, both he and Darren had been able to walk away from their crimes. It seemed bitterly unfair to Alex, though her biggest regret was that Michael’s death had allowed him to escape justice.

  Kieran had been Wyatt’s first kill since losing his daughter the previous year, and it was also where his mistakes had begun to show. For years he had got away with his crimes, but Elise’s death had made him careless. It occurred to Alex that perhaps he had been intentionally so.

  In the glove box of the van, along with the list of names and locations, Wyatt had left a series of letters, each addressed to his daughter. The most recent was dated two days before his suicide.

  Dear Elise,

  It is almost time now. There is nothing more on this earth that is needed of me and my rightful place now is back by your side, where I was always meant to be. When I see you, I hope I’ll have done enough for you to understand what has happened. I hope I’ll have done enough for you to find it in your heart to take me back.

  I told you in a previous letter that I loved once, a long time ago. He was taken from me, as you now are, and I believe that losing you was my punishment for what happened all those years ago. I was scared of what I was back then and what being with him made me. We could never have been together in the way he wanted us to be, but I am grateful for that. If life had been different for us, there would never have been you.

  I took those lives because I saw myself in each of them. They were lost boys, Elise, all of them, all searching for a place in the world that was shaped in their size, made just for them. They could have spent their lives searching, but they would not find it. I know all this because I was just like them. I saw their isolation and their pain and so they gravitated towards me, looking for my help; looking for an escape from their suffering. I helped them. When I get to you, if I see them, they will thank me for ending their misery.

  Save a place at your side for me. I will be with you soon.

  Benny x

  Alex folded the letter and returned it to her pocket. Benny – the pet name Elise had given her father, borrowed from a character in one of her favourite childhood books; a story that, according to his wife, Michael had read to their daughter every night for a period of three months when she was aged seven. It was all too frightening that a man so seemingly ordinary and good – a man respected by those who had known him – had held such dark secrets and been capable of such evil.

  Michael Wyatt had gone to the clifftop knowing he would die there. The list of names had been his confession, though it seemed it was only his daughter he had ever felt answerable to. A search of his laptop had found a history of visits to gay porn sites. With no evidence that he had sexually assaulted any of his victims, it seemed that he had harboured his desires with a shame instilled in him by Stan Smith, as though the sexuality he had kept a secret for an entire lifetime had been enforced upon him by his abuser.

  Though Alex’s heart cracked for each and every one of his victims, it broke at the thought of Matthew and Stacey. Wyatt had declared a sense of control in his letters to Elise, as though he had planned how and when his crimes would stop, and Alex hadn’t at first believed that if he hadn’t been interrupted that night by Matthew he would have ended his own life so soon. He had killed Stacey for nothing more than control: it would end on his terms, not hers. He had panicked, made mistakes: been forced to accept that it was all over. But there had been something that contradicted this, one final puzzle piece that suggested Wyatt had planned much further in advance than anyone might have anticipated. A call to Natalie Bryant revealed that it was Wyatt – after speaking with Natalie’s husband about the plans for an extension – who had recommended him. He had sent another man to uncover his crime, knowing what would be revealed beneath the patio.

  Wyatt had known his days were coming to an end, but despite this Alex still believed that Matthew Lewis had inadvertently saved the lives of other young men Michael Wyatt might have gone on to kill before he was eventually caught. It was a legacy that would be of little comfort to his parents.

  ‘Boss!’

  Alex was shaken from her thoughts by one of the team who stood feet away from her at the excavated patio.

  ‘Found him.’

  She crossed the garden and crouched beside the officer. With a gloved hand he drew back a corner of the rotting fabric in which Nathaniel Grant – aged nineteen at the time of his disappearance more than eight years earlier – had been wrapped before being buried. Alex stared at the brown length of dirtied bone, her heart already aching for the Grant family, who would be waiting in trepidation for news.

  ‘Let’s get him out of there,’ she said, standing.

  She headed back towards the house and went inside, stopping in the hallway to exhale the awful air of anticip
ation she had breathed in while out in the garden. Finally, she thought, it was all over.

  Forty-Nine

  The following day, a week after Jake Sullivan’s death, Alex was called down to the station’s reception area by the desk sergeant. She had been offered some time away from her duties, but with her resignation letter already submitted to the DCI, it wouldn’t be long before she was seeing a permanent break from the life that had been the only kind of existence she had really known for the past two decades.

  She opened the double doors with her key fob and made her way to the front desk. A man in his late twenties, dark-haired and pencil thin, with a jawline that could have been hand-chiselled, was waiting there, pacing the length of the reception area. The desk sergeant shot Alex an apologetic look, but before she had time to open her mouth, the man had spotted her and hurried over.

  ‘Proud of yourself, are you?’

  ‘Okay,’ Alex said calmly, looking again to the desk sergeant. ‘Can I ask what this is about?’

  ‘Sir.’ Her colleague had left the safety of the desk to come to her aid. ‘I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.’

  ‘No, I’ll not fucking calm down,’ the man said, throwing an arm out to his side to swipe the officer away. ‘You’re responsible for this!’

  There were two other people waiting at reception: an elderly couple who were sitting with their shopping bags at their feet, mouths open at they watched the performance unfolding in front of them. Alex imagined it beat anything that afternoon television might have offered.

  ‘He’d still be here if it wasn’t for you.’