The Playground Murders

by Lesley Thomson

  Danielle supposed that Terry was going to tell her parents – when they detached themselves from each other – about Danielle joining the police. He hadn’t disabused her. Terry wondered if the Hindles might be more upset by a daughter in the force than the actual reason. ‘Mr and Mrs Hindle, Joy, Eddie, this is Janet, she’s going to mind Jason and Maxine.’

  ‘I don’t need minding,’ Maxine said from behind the magazine. ‘My dad’s innocent, he ain’t done nothing!’ Word perfect, Terry thought.

  ‘Anything,’ Danielle said. ‘He hasn’t done anything. That’s not why they’ve come. I’m being in the police.’

  ‘Wash your mouth out,’ Maxine warned.

  ‘You going to arrest them?’ Danielle whispered to Terry.

  ‘Listen, Mr Policeman. I’m enjoying time with my family so unless you’ve got evidence, leave my house.’ Eddie grinned at Terry over his wife’s shoulder.

  ‘Eddie, it’s not you I need to… Can we talk?’

  ‘You talk if you want, mate, I’m busy.’ Eddie nibbled his wife’s ear lobe. ‘You can’t turn this place over without a warrant.’

  The guilty knew the law better than the innocent.

  ‘We would like Danielle to come with us to the station. We need you both there.’ Terry picked up a crisp packet by his shoe but with nowhere to put it, dropped it again. Maxine saw him.

  ‘Why?’ Joy Hindle pushed her husband away and struggling up on the sofa snatched a lighter and cigarettes from the muddle at her feet. ‘What’s she done now?’

  ‘He’s trying it on. Leave my kid alone!’ Eddie was indignant.

  Terry was distantly gratified to see Eddie Hindle’s faith in Danielle. She’d need that.

  ‘I’m helping.’ Danielle rocked on the heels of her Dr Martens. ‘I caught the murderer.’

  ‘What’s she done?’ About to strike a match, Joy Hindle paused.

  ‘I’d like to ask Danielle about the murders of Robert Walsh and Sarah Ferris.’ No easier than telling Cathy and Alan Ferris that their little girl was dead.

  Before Terry could stop him Eddie had hold of Danielle and yelled, ‘What’d I tell you about playing after dark?’

  There was a lull as the Hindle children, their dad seldom there, struggled to recall what he’d said. Joy lit her cigarette.

  ‘Please let go of your daughter, sir!’ Janet was reasonable. Cashman hovered in the doorway.

  During the interview Terry had fought his revulsion of Parsley. Now he felt nothing. A child. A girl. It was like an earthquake when all points of reference are buried.

  ‘That creep’s topped himself.’ Eddie took a drag of Joy’s cigarette. ‘I blame you lot. If you’d got him sooner, those kiddies would be alive! It could have been Jason!’ He pummelled a fist.

  Terry was ten years younger than Eddie, yet he didn’t fancy the prison-fit muscles straining Eddie’s Bruce Springsteen rolled T-shirt sleeves.

  ‘You’re so thick!’ Joy Hindle snatched back the cigarette and flicked ash into a Watney’s ashtray. ‘They’ve come for Danielle. She killed them kids!’

  Chapter Twenty

  2019

  ‘John Lennon was shot dead in America on the 8th December 1980.’ Stella stuffed salad garnish into her brie and cranberry ciabatta. ‘It was news in the UK the next day. That afternoon Sarah Ferris was murdered. I remember Terry saying it stole the headlines.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let the twins out if there was a killer on the loose.’ Jack nibbled at his quiche, his appetite had dwindled. A child being hurt was too much to bear.

  ‘There’s always a killer on the loose. Besides, your kids are too young to go out by themselves.’

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Jack and Stella sat at the corner table in the Winchcombe deli, their ‘office’ when they had last visited the village. They could see who came in and the table was out of earshot of other customers.

  ‘Tell that to Milly.’ Jack laid down his fork. How much say would he have about what Milly and Justin did when they were teenagers? ‘Harry Six Pack won’t care where they go.’

  ‘If he likes Bella he might like them too.’ Stella’s brand of logic wasn’t helpful.

  ‘He’s only interested in himself.’

  ‘Then Bella will leave him.’ Stella bit into her ciabatta. ‘When Dad was on that case, I was fourteen, too old for playgrounds, but when I stayed with him, I’d get a grilling. Where was I going? What time would I be back? Only go out with friends. Who were my friends? Mum had a word, but she’d be cross which made Dad stricter. It wasn’t like Mum was any less strict.’

  They had scoured the internet for information on the child-killer Danielle Hindle. Now Penelope Philips. Stella had ordered a couple of books. One by a male journalist who wrote for the Sun, the other an academic treatise by a child psychotherapist on children who kill which, Jack suggested, might provide pointers to why.

  Danielle Hindle had never admitted to killing the two children. Penny Philips saying that she was ‘the girl they call the Playground Killer’ was not an admission of guilt. There was no shortage of material on the deaths of six-year-olds Robert Walsh and Sarah Ferris. The red-tops had called Danielle Hindle ‘a freak of humanity’, ‘Nature’s Mistake’, ‘Devil Child’. It was Lucie May who coined ‘The Playground Killer’. Given this, Stella expected Lucie to have written a book. Lucie often claimed to be working on a book, but had not yet finished one.

  Stella wiped her mouth with her napkin. ‘Trudy was right about Carrie Philips not telling us everything. No wonder she thinks her mum killed Rachel Cater. When she was Danielle Hindle she murdered two of her friends.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Do I think she murdered them? There was no doubt at the time.’

  ‘But does that make Danielle Hindle prime suspect for this murder?’ Dwelling on Bella’s new man, Jack had actually meant Stella’s comment about Bella dumping Harry.

  ‘“A killer could kill again.”’ Stella repeated his own words about True Hosts. Jack felt a spark of delight that Stella took True Hosts seriously. Perhaps she’d take on ghosts next. She was swiping at her phone screen.

  ‘Wikipedia says that Dad arrested a homeless man a week after the discovery of the child’s body. Kids in my class said Dad was a brilliant detective, they wanted to meet him. I quite liked that. Except, being busy, he never came to the school. Sarah Ferris was strangled and stabbed and, it says here, her neck was crushed with a brick.’ Stella gave a shudder. ‘Her murder prompted Dad to revisit Robert Walsh’s death a few weeks earlier. It was originally assumed that he’d accidentally fallen from the slide. Says here that the pathologist was Michael Sutherland. He was at school with Dad. He came to Dad’s funeral. Dead now too. He died in a car crash.’ Stella paused as she digested her words. ‘He’s quoted, “The balance of probability does not exclude defence wounds.” Dad said Michael never committed himself to a position. He was faithful to the body. In court the defence struggled to discredit Sutherland’s evidence. Dad had charged Derek Parsley with Sarah’s murder. Parsley confessed then hanged himself in his cell.’ Talking about Terry had brought colour to Stella’s cheeks.

  ‘Why did Terry suspect Parsley?’ Nerve-racked and saddened by talk of the dead children and of Terry, Jack abandoned the quiche. Although the deli was warm and cosy, he shivered.

  ‘Some kids in the playground called Parsley “the man from Abba”.’ Stella chewed on the last of her ciabatta, apparently not having heard Jack’s question.

  ‘I like Abba,’ Jack said inconsequentially.

  ‘“The man from Abba” sounds unsettling.’

  ‘It’s the juxtapositioning of a light, happy concept with death. Fairy tales are sinister and frightening. Derek Parsley sounds like a character in a children’s book.’ Jack felt properly cold. Behind him the radiator pumped out heat.

  ‘After Dad charged Danielle Hindle with the murder of Sarah Ferris, he went to Mum’s. I was round my friend Liz’s and when I got back the next mornin
g he was there. It’s impossible to think he spent the night there, but I think he did.’ Stella nibbled on a stray stem of rocket. ‘I hoped that they were getting back together.’

  Stella hadn’t been in touch for weeks when Terry died. Mourning was harder if the relationship left much to regret.

  ‘They should never have split up.’ Jack slid a hand over hers. To his surprise – Stella wasn’t hot on public shows of affection – she held it tight.

  ‘Parsley did look a bit like Benny.’ Letting go of his hand Stella held up her phone.

  Derek Parsley had long lank brown hair and a straggling beard. His timid expression squeezed at Jack’s heart. Parsley was one of a line of men – Colin Stagg, Barry George, Christopher Jefferies – who, failing to fit society’s expectation of normal, were charged and sometimes found guilty of a murder that they hadn’t committed.

  Stella read from Wikipedia: ‘The police found Parsley staggering across Wormwood Scrubs park, his coat and shirt still saturated with blood. The murder was two years before the widespread use of DNA. Forensics could only match Parsley’s blood group to the dead girl. Martin told me…’ Stella breathed in as if for a running jump, ‘…that after they found Parsley dead, Dad cried in the toilet. Martin respected him. He said most of the blokes were hard as nails.’

  ‘Penny Philips talked like she was in love with Terry.’ Jack swerved from the mention of Cashman. He would show Stella she could mention the man without Jack looking mental.

  ‘One thing, Terry definitely didn’t keep her letters. I doubt there even were any,’ Stella said.

  Jack thought this a shame. With Hindle/Philips a suspect in the Cater killing, they could do with any material that offered a clue to her personality. He believed that Stella was right. Penelope Philips was a True Host and, as he knew, True Hosts did not leave a paper trail.

  ‘Danielle Hindle was considered an inveterate liar. Maybe Penny still tells lies,’ Stella said.

  ‘Psychopaths don’t change.’ Jack poked his fork at the cooling quiche.

  ‘Do you think she murdered Rachel Cater?’

  ‘Philips seemed less upset that Cater was murdered than that she’d have to begin her life afresh. She positively boasted about being the Playground Killer. I’ll say this for Carrie, whatever she feels about her mother, she never divulged her new identity. Loyalty runs deep.’

  ‘If Penny Philips did kill Rachel Cater she won’t want us finding out. Look, this was Danielle Hindle then.’ Stella passed him her phone. Rarely scared, Stella looked rattled now.

  The first thing that struck Jack was how knowing the girl looked. Her smile triumphant, cocky even, she eyed the police camera as if taking it on. How many murder suspects smiled in their arrest mugshot? ‘She looks intelligent. I can see why Terry took her seriously.’ Exploring the website, Jack found the Hammersmith and Fulham Chronicle. ‘“While most kids are playing kiss chase, Danielle Hindle was planning murder.” Lor lummy, Lucie was all over this.’ He passed the phone back.

  ‘She and Dad had started seeing each other. Mum behaved as if Dad had two-timed her although she had left him. Do not tell Lucie May!’ Stella shot him a look. ‘She’s gagging to get involved in the Cater murder.’

  ‘No way!’ Jack expostulated although he’d done it before. ‘Wasn’t Lucie in the office the day Carrie Philips came?’

  ‘I convinced Lucie that Carrie was there for a cleaning job.’

  Jack and Stella considered that very little convinced Lucie.

  ‘Lucie would love to break Hindle’s new ID.’ Jack imagined telling Lucie. He had no wish to protect a child-killer.

  ‘Martin was a rookie when Carrie’s mother was arrested. He must have come to Winchcombe after the murder to protect Penny’s new identity.’ Stella enlarged Hindle’s photograph on her screen. ‘Philips’s eyes are brown. In this picture they’re green. She must wear tinted contacts.’

  ‘Good idea, because those eyes are unforgettable,’ Jack breathed. ‘The eyes of a killer.’

  ‘She was a child when she murdered those children. I suppose we shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that she killed Rachel Cater. Anyway, Penny has a watertight alibi.’ Stella opened her notebook at the suspect list. All three of the Philips family, including Carrie, were on it. She pondered, ‘Should Penny even have been in Dalgarno Gardens. Surely she was barred from returning to the vicinity of her crime.’

  ‘Maybe Cashman waived the transgression; he wouldn’t have wanted the press to get wind of it.’ Knowing he was being unfair, Jack wouldn’t put it past Cashman to be in cahoots with the tabloids.

  ‘Perhaps a relative of one of the dead children found Hindle. They went to the house to kill her but murdered Rachel Cater instead. It could be a case of mistaken identity,’ Stella said.

  ‘Rachel had shoulder-length black hair. As an adult Danielle Hindle’s is short and blonde.’

  ‘But when she was ten it was like Rachel’s. We shouldn’t call Penny Danielle in case we do it in front of someone.’

  ‘We’ve never signed an agreement, we can tell who we like. Lucie would make mincemeat of her.’

  Stella was stern. ‘Penny Philips has done her time, we have no right to ruin her life.’

  ‘Hindle ruined lots of lives.’ If someone murdered Justin or Milly Jack wouldn’t rest until he’d found them. And then, his own life essentially being over, he’d kill them. Was Stella able to handle this case because she had no children and wasn’t interested in his?

  ‘The attack was described as frenzied. Cater had multiple stab wounds, all from behind. The killer may not have realized he’d got the wrong person until it was reported in the media,’ Stella said.

  ‘Meaning they could try again,’ Jack said. ‘Hindle didn’t seem worried about meeting us at the house.’

  ‘Perhaps they haven’t had an opportunity. Penny’s been in a safe house. If they’re keeping watch, they’ll know she has returned.’ Stella ruffled her hair back from her face. ‘By asking her to meet us there, we could have put her in danger.’

  ‘If she’s the killer, she’s not in danger.’ Jack rather hoped that they had done just that. ‘As I said, Hindle didn’t seem upset about Cater.’

  ‘Philips,’ Stella corrected him automatically. ‘You often say that because a person doesn’t seem upset it doesn’t mean they’re not. That said, she was more upset that her husband had been unfaithful. Let’s add the relatives of Robert Walsh and Sarah Ferris to our suspect list.’ She fired up her tablet and, locating names from Wikipedia, set about creating a spreadsheet.

  Name Role Age 1980 Age 2019 Dead / Alive

  Robert Walsh Victim One 6 - D

  Sarah Ferris Victim Two 6 - D

  Nicola Walsh Sister of V1 10 49 ?

  Robert Walsh Snr Father of V1 ? ? ?

  Gill Walsh Mother of V1 ? ? ?

  Lee Ferris Brother of V2 10 49 ?

  Cathy Ferris (Marshall) Mother of V2 ? ? ?

  Alan Ferris Father of V2 ? ? ?

  Penelope Philips (Hindle) Killer: V1 and V2 10 49 A

  Christopher Philips Husband: Killer (V1 & V2) N/A 55 A

  Carrie Philips Daughter: Killer (V1 & V2) 26 A

  Joy Hindle Mother: Killer (V1 & V2) ? ? ?

  Eddie Hindle Father: Killer (V1 & V2) ? ? ?

  Maxine Hindle Older sister: Killer (V1 & V2) 13 52 ?

  Jason Hindle Younger Bro: Killer (V1 & V2) 6 45 ?

  Kevin Hood Childhood friend: (V1 & V2) 6 45

  ‘Fourteen suspects.’ Stella seemed unfazed.

  ‘They must all have alibis.’

  ‘We’ll do a root and branch review,’ Stella said. ‘To give this a fair chance we need to undermine the police evidence against Christopher Philips. That means that no one’s alibi counts.’

  ‘Some of the suspects might be dead. It was over thirty years ago.’

  ‘Glass half full, Jack,’ said Stella. ‘We’ll start with Cater as the intended victim until there’s reason to abandon it. Let’s talk to Rachel�
�s colleagues.’ She packed away her tablet and stopped. ‘I forgot to say, I found this.’

  She put a silver object on the table next to Jack’s plate. He picked it up between finger and thumb.

  ‘I probably should have given it to Penelope,’ Stella said, ‘except as she hasn’t been living there I thought it might belong to Donette or Shelley or maybe the decorators. I was going to ask.’

  Stella never lied so why didn’t he believe her?

  ‘It’s a charm off a bracelet,’ Jack said after a moment. ‘It’s been engraved. “Best Sister.” Did Danielle Hindle have siblings?’

  ‘Two, a brother and a sister.’

  ‘Can’t see either of them giving her a charm that said that. She would have ruined their lives along with the relatives of the children she killed.’ Jack turned the charm around in his hand. It was of an angel, wings folded back. ‘It’s not real silver.’

  ‘It’s the thought that counts,’ Stella said.

  ‘Why did you take it?’

  ‘I just said.’

  ‘Really why did you?’ Jack fixed her with a look.

  ‘I don’t know. Is it stealing?’ Unstintingly honest, Stella went pink.

  ‘Ask your guys and chase up the decorators. If you get a negative then it might belong to Hindle or maybe to Carrie? Oh, except she’s an only child,’ he reminded himself. ‘You did the right thing, Stella. While Hindle’s a suspect we shouldn’t trust her with anything. Where did you find it?’

  ‘In the guest bedroom. That’s why I was still there when Penny called me. It was on the floor beneath the sill.’

  ‘Like the cast of this case, we shouldn’t discount it until we have good reason.’ While reassuring Stella, privately Jack marvelled at her temerity. Stella had come a long way with truth-bending since they’d met seven years ago. Go, Stella!

  Watching Stella pay at the counter, Jack realized he couldn’t bear to work on the case. Stella had said that Hindle had paid for her crimes. She hadn’t paid for Robert Walsh’s murder, Hindle was only tried for Sarah Ferris. A ten-year-old who had murdered her friends. Aged three, his children knew right from wrong. She was his prime suspect. Used to the proximity of True Hosts, Jack didn’t ever want to be in the same room as Danielle Hindle again.