by Jen Williams
Inside the well-lit kitchen, she turned the pot back and forth under the lights, examining the shape she’d first noticed just after Mr. Ramsey had given her the keys. It still looked rough and strange, and it was very much like the heart scratched into the rock in Ben Parker’s office. And there was something else, some other dim memory she couldn’t quite grasp …
Heather took the pot to the sink and gently tipped out all of the black dirt, sifting through it with her fingers, but there was nothing more to be found. Standing back, she looked up to see her reflection in the window; she looked pale and drawn, her dark hair falling forward across her cheeks and forehead.
“It has to mean something,” she said aloud to the empty kitchen. “It’s not a coincidence, it can’t be.” There was a connection here. A connection between not only her mother and Michael Reave, but between Heather and the new killer. Which had to mean she was in real danger. The story, she reminded herself. If there really was a connection between her and the Red Wolf, it meant that any article she wrote would be truly explosive. She would have to play this very carefully.
Movement in the darkness outside the window. Heather gasped, nearly dropping the pot, which she slammed down on the counter. There was a figure out there, a dark shape against the lawn. Without thinking she snatched up a knife from the kitchen drawer and ran to the back door, ramming the key home and turning it so violently that later she would realize she had almost sprained her wrist. Outside, the chill of the autumn evening filled her lungs like ice blocks and she could see almost nothing. Confused thoughts shot like comets across her mind: what if I catch the killer, what if he kills me, what if I kill him …
“Who are you? What do you want?”
Light from the kitchen windows cast yellow squares across the lawn. Whatever had been moving out there was gone.
CHAPTER
21
BEFORE
MICHAEL STOOD ON the driveway looking out across the fields below, narrowing his eyes as another vanload of young people drove up. They were greeted by a group who had already set up their tents, and he heard their bright voices drifting across to him. A soft pressure next to his thigh let him know that the dog was with him, and he heard the squeak of a pair of wellington boots moving across the foyer floor.
“I thought the rule was, not on our doorstep?” He spoke without turning around. The man chuckled from behind them, then appeared, pulling on a pair of thick gardening gloves.
“Your problem, lad, is that you’ve got no vision.” The man sucked in air through his teeth. It was early spring, and still very cold in the mornings. “I’m setting up a septic tank for them. Want to help?”
Michael crossed his arms over his chest. Down below, a pair of women were walking together across the field, one of them carrying a guitar case. They both had long blonde hair the color of wet straw, perfectly straight, and they walked arm in arm, their heads bent together in conversation. They looked like they could be twins, at the very least, sisters. He knew, instantly, that they, like all women, were not to be trusted.
“Why are you doing this? You’ve never wanted company here before.”
“Company? It’s hardly company, lad.” The man grinned his long toothy grin. “Oh no, this is something else altogether.”
CHAPTER
22
SHIVERING OUTSIDE THE gates waiting to be taken inside the prison, Heather glanced back at a small strip of green across the road. In the summer it would be thick with trees, but thorough winds had stripped all the leaves from the branches and it looked exposed and raw. A figure was standing there, his back to her, a hood up over his head and his hands deep in his pockets. She thought of Michael Reave, so dedicated to the landscape and things that grow. Unwanted, one of the images she’d found during her Internet searches floated through her mind’s eye; a woman, her face pale and waxy looking, her mouth full of blood and her head garlanded with primroses and small white flowers Heather couldn’t name. What did Reave do now, trapped in an antiseptic little cell? Did they have schemes to keep the prisoners busy? Did they let him do gardening? The thought of it made her grimace, and it took her a moment to summon a smile for the guard who collected her and took her through.
“Inspector Parker. It’s good to see you.” And she meant it. She had spent the morning making notes and searching her memories for any other links between her family and Michael Reave, but the thought of the slightly awkward, slightly sweet lunch she’d had with the detective kept slipping to the front of her mind.
The slightly ruffled looking detective glanced up from a ream of papers, eyebrows raised.
“Likewise.” They stood outside the interview room, just out of sight of the small reinforced window. “I, uh … thanks for coming in again. I know it’s not easy.”
“Yeah, well. Last time I saw Reave, he lost his temper with me. Is he … is he happy to speak to me again?”
“Very much so. In fact, he’s been asking about you.” Seeing the expression that passed over her face, Parker continued. “I know it’s weird, but … this is a man that carted parts of bodies around the country then planted flowers around them. His behavior isn’t necessarily rational, or predictable. It’s worth remembering that while you’re in there. Are you ready?”
Heather straightened up, lifting her chin a touch. Her head was thumping steadily, but she had spent a good half an hour in the shower that morning, trying to wash away her tiredness and the lingering anxieties of the night before.
“Let’s do it.”
The interview room was still small, oppressive, yellow. Michael Reave was still a larger than life presence, hulking in his seat, yet there was no mistaking the brief expression of pleasure that passed over his face as Heather entered the room.
“You came back.”
“How are you …” Heather steeled herself, internally apologizing to a score of lost women, “… Michael?”
He smiled, and he looked briefly younger.
“As well as I can be, lass. What’s the weather like out there?”
It was such an oddly polite question, so wildly out of place, that for a brief moment it was all Heather could do just to sit down and gather her wits.
“It’s cool, getting colder. Really starting to feel like autumn. There’s that freshness, you know.”
“Fresh air is good. It’s good for the soul. I wish I got more of it, but …” he shrugged, a rueful expression on his face. “I’ll never get as much as I need.”
There was no sign of the anger he’d displayed in their last meeting.
“Do you get outside?” she asked, thinking of the strip of green she’d seen outside the prison. She had no envelope of images today.
“He gets to spend time in the yard,” said DI Parker.
“And is there grass? Can you see trees, or anything?”
“It’s not much more than a concrete hole,” said Reave, dryly. He glanced at the guards. “I can see the sky, though, which isn’t nothing. And I’m glad of anything I can get.”
“It’s important to you, isn’t it? The natural world, the countryside.’
“Where I grew up …” He paused, as though he was going to say something else, then changed his mind. “When I was a kid, that’s all there was. We lived in a remote place—I spent my days in ditches and fields, caked in mud. There’s a peace to it, you know, especially when you don’t have anything else.” He looked up, his face briefly alight with anger. “We’re connected to the land, all of us. It’s not natural to be apart from it.”
“The women they say you killed.” Heather heard Parker clear his throat, uncomfortable with the turn in conversation. “They were found in the middle of green places, weren’t they? With flowers and trees and plants. Green things. Were they disconnected from the land? Were you trying to put them back?”
Heather sat very still. She was expecting an outburst, or at least for Reave to demand to be taken back to his cell. But instead he sat quietly, his gaze rooted to the table.
>
“Your mother knew. She knew about how important the real world was,” he said eventually.
“What else did my mother know, Michael?”
When he didn’t say anything, she continued.
“You can read a lot about your case online. I mean, you have to go a bit beyond Wikipedia, but it’s there, if you look. God knows how much of it is accurate, though … It was the last victim that got you convicted. Your van was seen in the area where her body was found, and a few strands of her hair were found on a blanket in the back. Not all that much to connect you to the previous victims apart from the similarity of the way they were killed and the bodies were staged. It must have been a lot of work, and you were very careful.”
She paused. From somewhere down the hall she could hear a phone ringing and ringing, no one answering. Reave had gone very still. One hand rested against the edge of the table, and one thick, callused thumb pressed against it, turning the flesh white. His eyes, which would still not meet hers, looked haunted.
“When I saw you the other day, we talked about this being a chance to tell your story. Was there someone helping you, Michael? Someone who helped you grab the women, and get them in the van?”
“My story.” He smiled tightly. “I told you lass, no one cares about my story.”
“I do.” She managed to say it this time, and with enough feeling behind the words that he looked up, his eyebrows raised. “If it’s my mum’s story, too, then I want to know about it. You think no one cares, but they would, Michael, if your story helps to stop someone from hurting more women. I care, if it means I can understand a bit more about my mum’s pain, and what made her do that to herself.”
She stopped, and for a long moment there was silence in the room. Heather reached for her bag, and after a slight hesitation, she pulled her mother’s suicide note from inside her note book. She smoothed it down with her fingers, trying to ignore the crushing feeling of guilt—What are you doing? Why would you show this, this painfully private thing, to a killer like Reave? And then she passed it over to him. Reave took it carefully, as though he was handling a baby bird.
“This is the note she left behind. It’s … I wondered if you could make anything of it.”
She watched his face carefully as he read it, hoping for something obvious—shock, anger, sadness, even amusement. Instead he looked at it steadily, his big hands making the note look like a tiny scrap of paper. He swallowed once, and then he passed it back to her, nodding slightly as though she had done him a big favor by letting him read it.
“Well?” Heather paused and bit her lip, trying to remove the desperate tone from her voice. “Does it mean anything to you?”
When Reave spoke again, his voice was softer than it had been.
“Your mother. She was different to the rest of them. Kinder, more innocent. She was a doe in those woods.”
“My mum was? Different to who?”
He snorted. “The rest of the commune. They were there because their friends were doing it, or they wanted to take drugs and get drunk, but your mother, lass. She was different to everyone, to all other women. She knew how important the woods were, she knew …”
When he didn’t continue, Heather leaned forward again. “What did she know?”
He’s going to say she knew about the murders, she thought wildly. That my mother stood by and waited for him to come back every night with blood on his hands. The idea was horrifyingly appealing. If her mother had been a terrible person all along, she’d be free of her guilt.
“She was innocent, but strong, too. I didn’t think it, not back then, but that just shows what I knew, doesn’t it? Like a rock under snow. I got her wrong, in lots of ways. She defied me, in the way that only a woman can.”
“What do you mean?”
He shook his head, and Heather experienced a moment of pure despair. They would talk in circles forever, the two of them, and he would always dangle this information just out of reach.
“Michael? Please. Tell me what you mean. Did you … did you love her?”
“I wanted to tell you another story,” he said. “Would you let me?”
Heather pressed her lips together and swallowed down her frustration. Parker had moved so that he was standing behind her chair, and she wondered if she was close to being removed from the room again.
“There was a king, and he was known for being the wisest king that ever lived. He was truly the … father of the land, and seemed to know about things almost before they’d happened. It was a mystery, but the people, his children loved him anyway. They didn’t ask how. They just trusted that he would always know.
“Every day, he would be served dinner in his royal dining room, and the final course would be served on a covered silver platter. No one knew what was in the dish, as the king always dismissed his guests and servants before he ate it, and the servant who brought it was always instructed never to lift the lid.”
Reave took a slow breath. Something about the telling of the story seemed to have calmed him.
“One day though, the servant couldn’t resist any longer. When the king had finished and asked for the dishes to be taken away, the servant took the mysterious silver plate to his own room, and locking the door, he removed the cover. Lying on the plate was a little white snake, it’s eyes red like drops of blood. Curious, the servant sliced a slither of snake flesh from it and put it on his tongue. Instantly, the room was filled with strange whispers and hushed conversations. Voices all around—it was the fleas in his bed clothes, the ants under his bed, the birds at his windowsill. They were all talking, talking, and he could understand them. He could understand them all, those little souls.”
Reave cleared his throat, and glanced at the note, which was lying between them on the table.
“Eventually, the king found out what had happened, and the servant was certain he would be executed for such a crime. But instead, the king took him, alone, into the heart of an enormous dark forest. They rode together for three days and three nights, until they came to a deep hole in the ground. The bottom of it, Heather, was littered with animal bones, and there were many white snakes, slithering across the dirt floor—so many, it was difficult to tell which were snakes and which were bones. ‘You see the price?’ said the king. ‘For such knowledge as we have, the land demands meat. It demands flesh and blood, for it is always hungry.’ And with that …”
“The king pushed the servant into the pit?” Heather completed it for him.
Reave stopped. A slow smile spread across his face. His hands were now lying loosely on the table, palms facing the ceiling.
“There you go, lass.”
Heather swallowed hard. She was beginning to think like him. When the silence between them had spooled into something less than comfortable, she leaned forward on the table. She forced herself to meet his eyes. “Was there someone else, Michael, someone you trusted to know how to handle everything? Do you know the person who is murdering these women now? Who was he to you?”
Reave shook his head. “I’m telling you my story, Heather, over and over. But I don’t think you’re listening.”
Michael Reave would say nothing more. However, when the two guards moved forward to escort him from the room, his head snapped up, life returning to his face.
“There will be a funeral? For Colleen? Or have you already …?”
“It’s on Wednesday,” said Heather.
“Are you putting her in the ground?”
It was almost too easy to relax around Reave, to believe he was no longer dangerous, but the eagerness with which he asked the question caused the hair to stand up on the back of Heather’s neck. She picked up the note from the table and slipped it back into her pocket.
“No, it’s a cremation. She asked for it in her will.”
He looked down, hiding his face, his big shoulders heaving as he struggled with something. The hand still resting on the table opened and closed convulsively.
“And her ashes?”
DI Parker stepped forward and pressed Heather’s shoulder, briefly, and she found herself ridiculously grateful for it.
“You know very well that’s none of your business, Reave.”
The big man looked away from them. Heather was shocked to realize that he was genuinely upset, his strong features constricted with grief. “She would want to be somewhere out in the open, lass. Just remember that.”
* * *
Later, in the murky little prison canteen, Parker sat opposite Heather, frowning and fiddling with paperwork again. Both their beakers of tea stood untouched.
“I’m not sure what good this is doing us. While it’s true that this is the most he’s ever said to anyone, including his array of shrinks, I’m not sure what the world’s creepiest episode of Jackanory is achieving.”
“Have you thought about it? The possibility that he wasn’t the one actually doing the killings all those years ago?”
He sighed.
“He’s not the best example of a serial killer, you do realize that?” When Heather looked at him blankly, Parker continued. “The vast majority of them are nasty idiots who got lucky for a while. Inadequate men with low IQs and messed up sexual appetites. Sad little men who feel nothing unless they are dominating someone. A case like Michael Reave is extremely rare, and I don’t want you to be taken in by it.”
“You mean, he’s unusual for a serial killer.”
Parker shrugged one shoulder, picked up his tea, and put it down again. “He’s articulate. Even charming. You can have a conversation with him and not feel your brain cells dying, which believe me, is unusual for that group. He doesn’t look like a monster. But,” he cleared his throat, “aside from the van and the evidence in it, he was living an itinerant lifestyle at the time, travelling around a lot, and he has no real alibis for any of the murders. His mother disappeared when he was a kid, did you know that?”